Spotlight Artist

Gretchen Adel

Midwest
Artist profile photo

Just Before the Ripples Break

Blurry figures

oil on canvas

Twice Seen, Never Known

Blurry figures

oil on canvas

The Leaves Remembered Every Shade of Light That Ever Touched Them

Blurry figure

oil on canvas

Featured in New American Paintings1 / 3

Artist Statement

 Through an intricate process of layering and fragmentation, my work explores the interplay between creation and dissolution, where figures, landscapes, and symbols emerge and dissolve in a state of perpetual flux. Each painting becomes an environment where the tangible and intangible coalesce, reflecting complexities of memory, experience, and time.

I am drawn to the tension between what is seen and unseen and the idea that finding oneself often requires self-loss, a willingness to surrender to forces beyond our control. As I intuitively paint, rearranging figures and chromatic planes to resolve compositional challenges, unexpected visual pathways emerge, unveiling a deeper sense of wholeness and reflecting broader existential cycles of creation and destruction.

Through the female figures in my work, I see the convergence of personal history and collective memory. These figures, entwined with their surroundings, make visible the porous and ever-shifting boundaries between other and self, past and present, and life and death. Ultimately, my practice grapples with these dualities in an effort to accept and surrender to their necessary coexistence; through loss, possibility emerges.

Discover more artists from the Midwest

THE MAGAZINE

Explore our magazine to discover exceptional artists

Open magazine with text, modern illustrations, and a list of artists on a pink background.
View issues

Call for Artists

Submit your work for consideration

New American Paintings is a juried exhibition-in-print and digital, presenting the work of 40 emerging artists in each issue.

View competitions

Your gateway to new art

Discover tomorrow's art stars, today

Two books on a wooden table with a modern decorative sculpture in the background.

PRINT + EARLY ACCESS DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION

$179/YEAR

DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION

$99/YEAR OR $10/MONTH

Each issue of New American Paintings features forty artists selected through our juried competitions—presented in a beautifully curated, full-color publication. Subscribers receive six issues per year, plus exclusive online access to current and past editions. Are you a collector? Consider our premium subscription and receive our museum-quality printed publication + access to each new digital issue two weeks before its general release.