adrien converse /// art is truth

Visual artworks by Adrien Converse

Tag: small

  • greg

    greg

    I added a high-quality feature to the hallway outside my studio this past week.

    Art is constantly in dialogue with its context; it’s important to remember the creative possibilities of dabbling in context.

    While this deep basement hallway has neither windows nor airflow, it does in fact have someone who hangs out in a corner of it who knows about taking care of plants in non-optimal conditions.

    Optimizing the non-optimal … I wonder how I got so good at that.

    We’ll see how he does. 🙂

    So far greg is thriving and has me remembering my old plant-filled apartment from back before certain accumulated experiences of harm wrenched my life into the underworld for a time. That time is becoming less and less relevant to my day to day. Good.

    I was often drawing little drawings like this back then, which look great on a wall or a shelf among plant friends.

    Maybe some new ones will start to propagate again before long.

    Even though it was extra cold today and spring has yet to sproing, things feel quietly alive down here.

    It’s probably greg.

    —Adrien

  • Listen to the Living

    Listen to the Living

    Do you listen to the dead
    Or listen to the living?
    Do they both demand of you
    To give and keep on giving?

    Feeding on your every hour
    Absorbing all your strength and power
    Until the day that you have died
    Equally unsatisfied—

    Yes, you could listen to the dead …

    Or, listen to yourself instead.

    That’s a little poem I wrote way back in 2017, to accompany this painting, which is currently featured in my show, Medicine of the Forest.

    Listen to the Living, acrylic and mixed media on 9″x12″ wood panel.

    I used a fun medium on this piece which I haven’t dabbled with in a long time … cold wax. It’s a sort of encaustic wax that you don’t have to heat for it to be malleable. I’m not totally clear on the chemistry of how that even works.

    This is unfortunately true of a lot of the supplies I work with. I know how to use the materials and make stuff turn out cool but I have little depth to my knowledge of what the actual chemistry is.

    Not just how materials function independently, but how they are produced, their impact on water, air, and soil, and how they interact with other materials to create different compounds immediately and over longer periods of time.

    It’s a lot to learn and I have found it intimidating. Mainly because it makes me incrementally more aware of how poorly humanity is stewarding our material reality on a systemic level.

    Every day I learn a little more though. It’s one of my long term goals: to understand the chemistry of the materials I work with so well that that knowledge itself becomes a core component of the art.

    In many ways that has already been the case from the beginning. But there’s a lot of leveling up to do.

    Because the times, they are a-changin’.

    —Adrien

  • Nice Try 👁️

    Nice Try 👁️

    Hello!

    My art show, Medicine of the Forest, opens in just a few hours, and I am quite stoked about bringing this collection of work into view in the place and time that lined up so naturally.

    It was a fun process to collaborate with the gallery staff on choices about how to arrange the somewhat quirky work within the somewhat quirky space. I am far from the only creative mastermind in the building.

    I chose to feature a piece in the show that I am not currently willing to part with (though one day that might change; you never know).

    It’s a little 8″x8″ acrylic painting which has been hanging in a very specific location in my own personal space since I made it about six months ago.

    There’s a lot that could be said about this piece, though I always like to leave plenty to the viewer’s imagination. I’ll just name a few statements that you can work with as you please:

    • A lot of people sure think they can get away with whatever they want, expecting never to experience consequences
    • Sometimes all it takes to send a would be perpetrator scurrying away mumbling “unfair!” is to look directly at them when they try to violate a boundary
    • “No” is an excellent word and saying it when you need to does not make you evil

    This piece is marked “not for sale” at the show, however, I did get a whole bunch of 3″ x 3″ stickers made through the local sticker shop in town. They were kind enough to do a rush job for me so that I’d have them in time for the show opening tonight. They turned out awesome!

    Unless these stickers are insanely popular and all get snatched up tonight, they will likely be available at Make.Shift Art Space during their open hours throughout the month.

    I’m keeping the painting, but the idea behind the painting is an idea FOR THE PEOPLE.

    Get one, stick it somewhere, claim your space.

    Looking forward to a fun evening.

    Peace,

    Adrien

  • The Dubious Eye

    The Dubious Eye

    Sometimes tiny, minimal art can be potently expressive …

    dubious eye acrylic painting

    A number of years ago I studied a lot of the work of Hannah Webb (creator of The Obanoth, definitely worth checking out). While I by no means feel like our styles are comparable I still sometimes find myself referencing some of her tasty color choices in my head.

    My art in general is at least 9 steps ahead of what I have already broken down into logical thoughts. I make it a steadfast rule not to shortcut what doesn’t yet make sense to me just because I want to be able to explain it more easily to an audience.

    This little acrylic piece on wood panel captures an expression that might seem like doubt … if the viewer is expecting to be validated?

    Belief gets wielded by humans between each other nonverbally as a life raft, a weapon, generosity, bait—or perhaps, nothing more than data.

    It was made in January 2025 and has found its home.

    I used heavy body acrylics.