Born in England in 1942, Chris Adams completed undergraduate studies in geology at Queen Mary College, London, before moving to Oxford to undertake his PhD on the geochronology of the Channel Islands and adjacent French mainland. He worked as a researcher in Canada before moving to Lower Hutt, Wellington in 1969 to take a position at the DSIR’s Institute of Nuclear Sciences (INS). He loved living there and remained until 2004. Continuing work as a geochronologist, in 1978 he took the first of seven trips to Antarctica. Work with German field parties led to a Humboldt Fellowship award in 1982-84. Broader, regional Gondwana studies there initiated a major collaboration with geologists in Germany, Argentina and Chile which extended over ten years.
Introduced to printmaking in 1987 by Jill MacIntosh, Kate Coolahan and Basia Smolnicki, it was meeting John Drawbridge in 1994 that led to Adams‘ fascination with the mezzotint process. Covering 3 decades, his prints have been inspired by significant areas of interest in his life – the ways contemporary NZ poets have made their mark here; his research travels throughout Zealandia; and a love of the Otago Peninsula.