Sculptures
7 works
Adam Handler Ghost Abduction in 1987 For Sale
Adam Handler
Ghost Abduction in 1987, 2023
Oil stick, acrylic and pencil on canvas
18 x 15 in 45.7 x 38.1 cm
About this work
Adam Handler is a New York–based painter celebrated for his bold, childlike figures and emotionally charged visual language. Growing up around his grandparents’ picture-framing studio and later studying classical drawing in Italy, he developed a practice that blends intuitive mark-making with thoughtful composition. His work embraces immediacy—bright acrylic fields, expressive oil-stick gestures, and simplified silhouettes—creating an aesthetic that feels both spontaneous and deeply intentional.Handler draws heavily from personal memory and the relationships that shape him, especially the women in his life. These influences appear through recurring motifs such as oversized eyes, elongated limbs, ghosts, flowers, and intimate domestic symbols. While playful at first glance, his paintings carry currents of vulnerability and introspection, reflecting themes of imagination, loneliness, love, and connection.By flattening space and amplifying expressive detail, Handler turns each figure into an emotional proxy—raw, direct, and relatable. His work functions like a visual diary, merging innocence with complexity and offering viewers a space to see parts of their own inner world reflected back.
Price on Application
Edition & Provenance
- Year
- 2023
- Medium
- Oil stick, acrylic and pencil on canvas
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About Adam Handler
Adam Handler grew up in Queens, New York, and spent much of his childhood at his grandparents' framing factory in the city, where his interest in art first took hold. He later studied life drawing in Italy and graduated from Purchase College with a degree in art history in 2008.
Handler works primarily in oil stick, producing bold, colorful compositions built around a small set of recurring characters, including ghosts, wide eyed girls, and bats. His figures are simplified and direct, drawing on a deliberately naive visual style while carrying deeper themes of memory, loss, and connection. Much of his work is personal, shaped by his relationships with his wife, mother, and grandmother, and by the people and experiences that have influenced him over time.
His paintings favor earth tones and pastels, with an emphasis on scale and spontaneity. Handler has described his process as intuitive, working from emotion rather than a fixed plan, which gives his compositions their loose, immediate quality.
Handler has exhibited widely, with solo and group shows across the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia, including presentations in New York, Seoul, and Mykonos. His work has also appeared at major art fairs, among them Art New York, Art Market Hamptons, and the Armory Print Fair.
He continues to live and work in New York.