Sean Kelly Gallery has announced the representation of abstract painter Lindsay Adams in collaboration with PATRON Gallery in Chicago.
The Washington, D.C.–born artist draws on her background in international studies and cultural anthropology in alchemical canvases that explore identity, history, and collective memory.
In 2025, Adams was commissioned by the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago to create Weary Blues, a public installation named after the Langston Hughes poem, which integrates her abstract painting with Black literary history in a communal café space. She is currently an artist in residence at the World Trade Center through Silver Art Projects.
Her practice includes painting and drawing, using rigorous conceptual investigation as the starting point for her vivid canvases. She uses both abstraction and representation to construct layered compositions that reflect both personal and communal narratives. By layering gestural and chromatic elements, Adams examines the fluid and changing nature of time and memory. “Each mark intuitively invites a dialogue between reality and dreaming,” the artist said of her practice in a statement.
Adams currently has a solo show with PATRON on view until June 14th, and had her first solo exhibition with Sean Kelly Gallery in Los Angeles this January.
On joining Sean Kelly’s program, she said, “I’m honored to join Sean Kelly Gallery, a program committed to vision, creativity, and artists who continually push the boundaries of their practice. This marks a pivotal moment for me—an opportunity to deepen the questions I’m asking, expand the scope of the work, and grow within a dynamic community that challenges and inspires.”
Gallery founder Sean Kelly noted, “Her work is deeply thoughtful, formally rigorous, and profoundly moving—rooted in a nuanced understanding of identity, history, and imagination.”
Adams’s work has been recognized with the Helen Frankenthaler Award (2024) and the New Artist Society Merit Award (2023). Her paintings have been exhibited at institutions including the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C.
