Adam Daley Wilson

Lives and works in Portland, ME, USA

Artist statement

Adam Daley Wilson Artist's Statement Updated September 2024 2026 Update: Pending soon. I'm a self-taught conceptual artist who lives and works in Maine. Since 2020 I've been represented by Engage Projects Gallery in Chicago. My two solo shows so far have been selected 'must see' in Chicago by Artforum. I say this because my work is visual but also very theoretical and experimental. My work manifests in oil painting, installations, video, and performance. I'm interested in theoretical and philosophical questions about meaning, meaning-making, and interpretation. My practice blends cognitive and intuitive processes. I use language, in both legible text pieces, as well as in abstract personal writing system pieces, to experiment with visual and semiotic meaning; loss of meaning; and visual and language boundaries, both in language-symbols and in abstraction. The substantive content of my work, and the substantive questions that I'm interested in, are informed by my traditional liberal arts education (Stanford Law, University of Pennsylvania) and my experience as a lawyer at global law firms, with an emphasis on Constitutional Law, legal philosophies, and court systems as public forums. That's the cognitive. The parallel part, the intuitive, comes from my lifetime diagnosis of bipolar 1: Neurologically, when in hypomanias, my naturally high levels of dopamine and serotonin cause increased electrical connectivity in the frontal and temporal lobes, causing increased abilities to...

Artwork

• If You Let Yourself Think About It, 2023. oil on varnished image on canvas
• Past All Stigma Comes Now Words Of Elegance And Grace, 2023. Archival print, performance
• How It All Relates Is Like The Honey Bee (Theory Art No. 6, New Cave Painting No. 23), 2024. oil stick on canvas
• Everything You Wanted And Yet Still, 2023. oil on varnished image on canvas
• I Am Not Yours (Conceptual Self-Portrait No. 6, Artwork to Viewer), 2024. oil on canvas
• I Am Also That But Not Just That, 2024. oil on varnished image on canvas
• Untitled, 2023. oil stick on canvas, spoken word, live audience
• You Want To Be Good But Only Part Of The Time, 2024. oil on varnished image on canvas
• If It Has A Title It Is Art With Words, 2022. oil pen, ink, crayon, pencil
• Dream State, 2022. Oil Painted Text On Collage / Montage of Rephotographed and Altered Appropriated Images
• You Chose To Misrepember So We Have Moved On, 2021. Oil stick and charcoal on canvas
• We All Like To Look Away Sometimes (I Feel So Much Better Now), 2021. Hand-painted oil text on rephotographed altered new media image on canvas
• We Could Have Been Lovers But Then You Were Gone, 2020. Oil stick and charcoal on canvas
• Species Anosognosia, 2019. Oil stick and charcoal on canvas
• Some Feelings And Thoughts I'll Have Any Second, 2017. Ink on colored paper with 28 hour participatory performance
• You Could Not Be A Less Relational Self, 2020. Hand-painted oil text on printed canvas
• Dialogue, Just Who Has The Illness Of The Mind (r) and Fourth Study For A New American Flag (l), 2018. New media on site-specific wall
• Tell Them This Is Joy, 2024. oil on varnished image on canvas
• Everything We Story The Opposite Is True, 2021. Oil stick on canvas
• Species Narcislective, 2021. Oil stick and charcoal on canvas
• I Am Not Sure I Should Hope More, 2021. Text and unfiltered photograph by artist on aluminum
• You Chose To Misremember So We Have Moved On, 2020. Oil stick and charcoal on canvas
• Is It Social Interaction Or Is It Inborn Structure And What Does It Mean To Us All, 2021. Oil on canvas
• I Came Closest In Manhattan To Claim Your Handsome Man, 2020. Hand-painted oil text on rephotographed and altered appropriation of Prince's appropriation of Clasen's commercial photograph for Marlborough cigarette corporation
• New Cave Painting No. ___ (I Am All The Parts That Are Me And You Will Not Reduce Me), 2021. Oil stick on canvas
• All Those Years As Man Just To Be What We've Become, 2021. Oil painted text on altered and manipulated detail of appropriated image
• I Forgot That I Should Care, 2021. Oil text paint on altered detail of manual rephotograph of famous artist's first rephotograph of commercial image
• New Cave Painting No. ___ (Personal Writing System No. ___), 2020. Oil stick and charcoal on canvas
• Notions Of Secular Barely Made Sense, 2020. Hand-painted oil text over unfiltered photograph by artist
• Omnia Narria Fabulae (Everything We Story), 2021. Oil stick on canvas
• Look At What We Have Created, 2019. Oil on canvas
• Let Me Say This About That, 2018. Oil on canvas
• You Only Live Once In American Violence, 2017. Acrylic on canvas
• Incarcerated America, 2016. Acrylic and spray paint on canvas