Katy Donoghue interviews painter Marina Adams whose show Soft Power is on view at Salon 94 Bowery, New York, through February 22, 2016.

Adams remarks: “I was at the Alhambra, I must have been in my twenties, in Grenada at the Moorish Palace. It’s all tiled. So I was not looking at abstract expressionist paintings, but I was looking at all that color and pattern and repetition in the tile work, and it gave me this insight into an experience that is not narrative. It occurred to me that the work itself could be exactly that—it could be a space for thought and an experience.”