John Adams landscapes evoke memories at Maitland Regional Art Gallery

The paintings on show in the space, by the late local artist John Adams, are not only small in scale (measuring around 40cmx15cm), but they contain within them personal moments, love of place and family.

These are mostly peopled landscapes, even though the people are not always depicted, they are present in the work's titles. There's Bruce next to his vines. There's Tony's farm. There's Carmel and Danny's garden, a storm seen from a levee bank (Mark and Emma's), and Al and Mel's place at Gilleston Heights. Then there's "Bin Night" at Jacqui and Leigh's.

Many of the works are inhabited by Adams' wife Ena Durrant, along with his children and grandchildren.

Ever present in this part-memoir is the landscape form that's been a part of Adams' worldview since he moved from Newcastle to Cessnock when he was three years old. His mother would point out the jagged and undulant cut across the horizon made by the Brokenback Range.

"It's been part of his life since then," she says. "They were a dominant force from a very early age."

Adams raised his own family locally, depicting in one of the 36 paintings which are on show a view from his home across lush fields to the gallery where his work is now displayed.

Adams passed not long before the opening of his exhibition.

In remembrance, curator Kim Blunt assembled parts of Adams' studio in the gallery's front window, including music Adams listened to when he painted. There's a newspaper-lined table, an easel, a blue Chux cleaning wipe, and a painterly sketch of himself at the levee with the Brokenback Range in the background.

"John had a fascination with the local area from childhood, he love taking the roads less taken and exploring, he liked dirt roads," Durrant says.

The exhibition title Thirty-Six Views of the Brokenback Range is Adams' reference to the work of Japanese Master Hokusai, who in his own late life in the early 19th Century published a series of 36 works showing Mt Fuji from varying perspectives and under different conditions.

Newcastle painter John Morris, who met Adams at art school and formed an enduring friendship with him, says Adams' referencing of the Brokenback Range was a "referencing to home".

"Home was the epi-centre of the world for John," Morris says.

"It explains why the Brokenbacks are the reference point because he knew them as a child.

"It was another way of talking about home."

The works show the Brokenback Range from the distance of Newcastle and up closer in detailed segments. The mountains are at times just a smudgy and hazy form, a backdrop to the picture. Other times, they are more apparent as the subject of the painting. In his "gloaming" works, Adams shows the mountain range shimmering as twilight turns to dusk.

Adams also examines the presence of the range in everyday life moments, such as "after the jazz festival", a view from the rubbish dump, and a depiction of a trip with friends in 1975.

"They're very humble paintings, they're not grand themes," Morris says. "Down the wheelie bins, in a very dusty street in Weston, are the Brokenbacks.

"That they are an intimate scale, is very appropriate. He lacked any grandiosity."

During their four years at Newcastle Art School, the two Johns lived in share houses in "the worst parts of town" (now not the worst parts of town, Morris reflects), and drove around Newcastle at night "singing Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen".

"It was a very untrammelled time," Morris says. And the art school "was a hotbed of dissent".

"It was a wild, wild place. It was about the same time as the Vietnam War was coming to an end.

"It was a very politicised and very energised time."

Adams dedicated three decades to teaching art at Kurri Kurri High School, with a focus on ceramics. Upon retiring in 2012 he turned his pottery studio into a painting studio, working on his Brokenback exhibition over many years.

John Adams passed away on June 8. Not long before, Morris was with him at the Maitland gallery when he was handed a gallery brochure featuring one of his paintings. "He was chuffed," Morris says.