Medium_Watercolor on canvas

Size_18”x 24”

Year_2025

“I decided to make a painting based on one of Van Gogh’s Sunflower pieces for the ICON exhibit. To me, Van Gogh as a human being is an icon himself. His paintings are instantly recognizable. As an art history nerd, his passionate and tragic life was like a fairytale for me as a young artist. I’ve read all the letters he wrote to his brother, while struggling to survive and still make paintings. Painting because he had such a burning desire to paint, with a madness that fueled his imagination and ultimately drove him over the edge. In our culture, the Sunflowers have reached ICON status. People from all over the world know these paintings, they are familiar, and they represent the life of a legendary artist.”

Adam Lister lives and works in Rhinebeck, New York. A graduate of The School of Visual Arts in NYC, Lister is a visual artist whose work consists of geometric interpretations of iconic imagery and pop culture references. Lister has exhibited his artwork in numerous galleries throughout the world, while also collaborating with fashion brands, athletic companies, and other artists.

Lister breaks down classic images to their most elemental forms by combining the deconstructed and minimal aesthetic of pixelated graphics with the transparency of watercolor paint and the flatness of acrylic paint. The artist explores the relationship of nostalgia and mathematics, taking on subjects that hold a collective familiarity and reducing them to flat cubist-like compositions. The process deals with taking a memory of an image, and highlighting its complexity and simplicity at the same time. These paintings are influenced by geometric thinking and a desire to capture the briefness of a mental picture. Lister’s curiosity surrounding visual perception and spatial arrangement plays with the way that he describes each image with a specific level of clarity.