Adelie Landis Bischoff is going a little crazy. Incessant hammering echoes through her Oakland Hills home, as work crews tear down three tiers of decking riddled with dry rot – most of it blamed on the 1991 Oakland Firestorm that wiped out most of the trees leaving the rebuilt homes much more exposed to the elements. Scaffolding has, for the most part, replaced the decks that once offered sweeping views of Oakland and beyond. They will be rebuilt but in the meantime the hammering will continue. Adelie’s attached studio with its soaring 20-foot ceilings and cascading natural light offers little peace. “The work is hard,” she says. An old back injury is flaring up, making it hard for her to stand for long periods. Her son designed a modified chair/stool so she can keep painting, but it’s not the physical pain that she struggles with the most. “Cruelty, destruction, inhumanity.” She almost spits out the words and lets them drop without explanation.

For the past decade her work has taken on solemn tones – dark paintings depicting the darker side of humanity. The pain is almost palpable and it’s definitely taken a toll on the artist. She finds distraction in an unusual place – The Home Shopping Network, or any other cable show that sells jewelry. “It has to be a bargain,” she says with a smile. She admits she doesn’t need the stuff, and often when it arrives she doesn’t even like it all that much, but it offers a much-needed escape. Right now, though, she’s in withdrawal – undergoing a bit of forced rehab. The satellite dish came with the deck demolition, so no more cable TV shopping, at least for now. From pragmatic to impulsive, from serious to silly, Adelie Landis Bischoff is a lovely, lively walking contradiction.

It is impossible to talk about Adelie Landis Bischoff without talking about her late husband – the renowned Bay Area painter Elmer Bischoff. He was her teacher, mentor, husband and best friend. Even after more than a half century since their first meeting, she still gets teary-eyed talking about him. They forged a life together in the midst of an artistic revolution known as the Bay Area Figurative School. Talented painters like David Park, Hassel Smith and Elmer Bischoff were shaking up the art world with something of a West Coast rebellion. Elmer was at the center of that creative firestorm, while Adelie was content to live and work in his substantial shadow. “It was a pretty traditional relationship,” she says without a hint of resentment. Their first meeting took place in a classroom, but it was her very untraditional decision, made on a crowded A-train back in New York, that would set the stage for their life-long love affair.

Born in 1926, Adelie Landis was raised in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. She grew up loving art, especially drawing. She was a good student, who dreamed of becoming an artist or doctor, but money was tight and it was clear that after high school she would have to find a job to support herself. She found the solution in the U.S. Nursing Corps. – a government run program created during the second World War to encourage young women to enter the nursing profession. Adelie enrolled in a nursing program and the government covered expenses, including a small monthly stipend. After graduation she got a job that allowed her to keep taking art classes at night. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a good compromise given her economic realities. Still, it was a grind and the independent-minded Adelie wanted more.

A vacation to California planted the seed, but it was a particularly hellish trip on the subway during rush hour that would seal her fate. Fed up with the daily crush of commuters and the time wasted getting from one place to another (leaving precious little time for her art), Adelie made the decision, right then and there, to up and move to California. Eight months later with $800 in her pocket, Adelie landed in San Francisco. Moving across country with no real plan is a bold move for anyone, but it was downright courageous for a young woman of that era, but she was determined to change her life. Adelie applied to and was accepted at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). Elmer Bischoff was one of her first teachers, but it would be a couple of years before they would make a love connection. Initially, Adelie threw herself into the creative culture of the Bay Area and began what she has often called “the best year of my life.”

“I was completely intimidated. I was used to painting studio models and back then everyone in San Francisco was doing ‘drip and blob.’ Abstract was new to me. I had to learn. I felt like a city-bumpkin dropped into this world exploding with newness.” Adelie did have some of the best teachers around, but it still wasn’t easy. “Hassel Smith was tough. I remember one of his landscape classes where he was going around looking at all the students’ work. Thankfully he just passed me by, but he stopped at the student next to me. He didn’t say anything – he just started laughing. I was scared of him after that.” Despite the intimidation factor, Adelie thrived in this creative climate and began to develop her own style – paintings that always came with a message. From her early abstract work to the figurative and fashion paintings of mid-career to the darker images stalking her canvases today, Adelie has always had something to say.

Adelie’s abstract expressionism paintings of the 1950’s and 1960’s popped with color and texture. Even some of her more traditional landscapes were more about shape, form and color than a realistic depiction of any particular vista. Her figurative work, although more representational, still maintains her sense of color and structure. Adelie shows a more playful side with her fashion series – beautiful legs adorned with high heels and surrounded by exploding red brushstrokes, two pairs of shoes, or the pattern of a gorgeous dress, just to name a few. As light hearted as these paintings may seem, Adelie insists they come with an underlying message about fashion, beauty and the obsession to be beautiful. After her husband’s death, Adelie abandoned the bold primary palette for more subdued hues. She discovered a charcoal that, for her, was the perfect drawing tool, and with a growing need to create a “visual language to protest the collective abuses of society and individuals” Adelie began to draw and paint a series of serious statements on war, violence and mourning. A pilgrimage back to Madrid (she had been previously with Elmer) to revisit Goya’s Black Paintings solidified her direction, a path she continues to explore today.

Those early years were busy for Adelie – working part-time as a nurse and going to school full-time, she eventually earned a BA and MA from the University of California at Berkeley. Right after that she needed a letter of recommendation for an arts scholarship so she got in touch with her old professor, Elmer Bischoff, who was just ending his second marriage. He told her to come to his studio for some beans and rice. They talked the night away. “After that night I said to myself ‘that’s the kind of guy I need.’” He asked her out and after getting over the initial wariness over dating a former professor, she agreed. Five years later they were married and several years after that they adopted a baby boy and named him Mark.

The family settled into the routine of daily life. Like so many women, Adelie struggled to find balance – time for her family and her art.  Throughout she continued to paint in relative obscurity while her husband continued to attract the attention of the art world.  “I was happy to have him out in front. I thought that the best thing for the relationship.” The marriage was volatile but solid. Two independent, determined souls who made it work – lifelong lovers and best friends until he died of cancer in 1991.

It was not a good year. Six months later Adelie would also lose her home in the infamous Oakland Hills Firestorm. Adelie remembers the day – a Sunday in October. “It was windy. There had been a small fire the day before that firefighters thought they had contained. I remember thinking ‘boy, had that happened today the whole hillside would be lost.’” Even though she was uneasy, she went about her daily routine – heading down the hill for a workout in the pool. “At one point I looked up from the water and the sky was black. Thick smoke swallowed up the road up to my house. The fire re-ignited that fast – in a matter of minutes. I jumped into my car and raced up the hill. All these people were coming down and telling me not to go, but I didn’t listen. I ignored the warnings and got to my house. I guess I had about ten minutes to decide what to take and what to leave. My heart was beating so fast it literally felt like it was beating outside of my chest. I retrieved a friend’s dog that I had been taking care of, a book of Elmer’s sketches, my son’s drawing, photo albums, but so much was left behind. A Diebenkorn drawing, Frank Lobdell, Hassel Smith – they were all hanging too high. I had to leave and I got out just in time. Two of my neighbors perished. They waited too long. The fire sucked up all the oxygen, and they literally suffocated.”

Adelie raced down the hill, picking up stray families along the way. Her old car packed to the hilt, she made it to safety. “I stopped at  a turn part way down the hill where people had gathered. I almost kept going, but for some reason I stopped and thank God I did. I ran into my son who was about to sneak past police lines to go look for me. If he had, I hate to think what would have happened.” Her voice cracks as she recounts the story. It took firefighters a day to get the blaze under control, but not before 25 people had died and almost 3,000 homes had been destroyed. As for Adelie, she had her son, her life, and all that she had squeezed into her old Volvo but that was about it. Many of Elmer’s paintings were in storage, but most of hers were not.  “I lost a lot of work. The destruction was overwhelming. When we went back we didn’t even know where the house used to be. Even the guide posts were gone.” It took Adelie a year and half to rebuild. The new house is a contemporary masterpiece perfect for showcasing art. “I was glad to be alive. I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I just thought I’d better get back to painting again.”

Since that fateful year, Adelie’s paintings have taken on more overt political overtones. With titles like A Great Cry Rose Up From the Land, Men With Guns, and Women Mourn, she is clearly affected by world events and feels compelled to paint about them, but she says she is moving in a new direction – not necessarily out of the dark completely, but the new work is more hopeful, a combination of new forms and old ideas. She promises that her Home Shopping Network days are behind her, and she’s even considering going back to her roots and splitting her time between California and New York City. Adelie Landis Bischoff is looking to the future.

Written by: Erin Clark

ARTWORKS Magazine – Spring 2007