Virginia
The place the painter stands before the first mark.
Tell me about the environment you grew up in; the textures, the things you carry with you.
AdamI grew up in Richmond, Virginia, which is this kind of transitional space, between the North and the South, and those conceptual and historical perceptions, how geography and culture play themselves out within an American experience. The South is wildly diverse, there’s a huge difference between, say, Tennessee and Florida, or North Carolina and Alabama. But there’s a general understanding of the South, and then when you get past Baltimore, DC, you start to make this transition to the North, which becomes about larger cities, a more expansive but grounded sense of possibility.
One of the things that’s interesting about the South is this sense of a radical poetic imagination, that anything, in a mythical sense, is possible. But in the North it’s more grounded, more tangible: I’m going to do something, I’m going to build something, I’m going to make something happen. And Virginia is kind of in the middle of it all.
Did you always feel that, the potential for growth, for expansion?
AdamI’ve had both feelings at once. These unexpected experiences where everything seems possible, and then the limits of the everyday, and reconciling those two points. The reality of the everyday and the possibilities of one’s imagination. That, I think, actually is life: how one reconciles those two.
And what of that finds its way into the work?
AdamThis idea of process in translation. Using translation as a process for creation. A filtering of concept, color, shape, form. Translation as transformation, in transition.
Translation as transformation in transition.
What left an impression, growing up? The encounters that stayed.
AdamIt was the potential of things that seem, on the face of it, simple, but are actually very complex. Language, for example. I was always very interested in literature of all kinds; poetry, essays, plays. Any use of language fascinated me. Everyone always thought I was going to be a writer. But at that point it was just the easiest thing. You didn’t really need anything but a piece of paper and a pen. You could make a start.
And then there were these huge moments — encounters with ideas. Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm: Number 30 (1950) at the Met. My first Richard Serra. Sol LeWitt, Barbara Kruger. That Douglas Gordon piece, Play Dead; Real Time (2003), this massive elephant lowering its body to play dead, filmed from every angle. And Audre Lorde, June Jordan. All these touchpoints that were radically different from everyday life. When you’re growing up in Virginia, in the suburbs, you don’t see Donald Judd and Richard Serra. The first time you encounter these things, you haven’t seen anything like it.
And because of those encounters, I’ve lived a life where I want to make sure I’m creating something that’s radically different, something that can occasion that sense of possibility, and really that sense of dignity and hope, in somebody else.
You didn’t really need anything
but a piece of paper and a pen.
You could make a start.
Gathering
The gathering of oneself and ideas before the first mark.
Whereas now, with your art-making, you need so much more than paper and pen.
AdamSo many tools and materials and people. But I like beginning with humble materials, and I like pushing them to evolve and change. There’s always something humble and essential that’s maintained. And there’s also this kind of distilled layering of possibility — material possibilities, textural possibilities, tonal possibilities. Using all of those qualities in hyper-specific, experimental, unexpected ways at any given moment.
Reaction
The reaction is fast, unexpected, yet balanced by intention.
What tools do you like to work with most?
AdamI like to work fast. I like speed when I’m making things, which is why I like spray paint, ink, watercolor — things that move quickly. I like adding water to acrylics, to make them watery and fast. When you work with paint, it’s thick, and that thickness is slow. There’s a temporal reality to it.
In the moment of making, I like wet — wet into wet. Watercolor into ink, ink into spray paint. And sometimes I spray water. I’m always starting the paintings on paper, so when the medium hits, that reaction is fast and unexpected. You don’t know what’s going to happen. That’s part of what drives it — honestly, it’s kind of an amazing addiction, because I don’t know what’s going to happen.
There’s spontaneity in that, but structure too. At what point does it need structure?
AdamThat comes later. It starts in total flow, and the structure gets filtered in afterward. The structure is really a way to drive people’s attention to the overwhelming detail in the work — all that layered in, conceptually and materially. It slows the speed down. It’s like another temporal reality is layered on top of it.
It’s kind of an amazing addiction,
because I don’t know
what’s going to happen.
Evolve
Humble materials, pushed to evolve through gesture.
I didn’t want them saying,
oh, what a beautiful blue.
For a long time you worked in black and white.
AdamI put a certain limit on myself. There was a period where the only colors I was interested in were black and white — though of course the spectrum of blacks and whites is encyclopedic on its own. Some of that was because I wanted to bring people’s attention to the level of the work. I didn’t want them saying, oh, what a beautiful blue. Then, once I’d critically thought through some things about the work, I was fine letting color come back in, because I had a different sense of direction. Color couldn’t be a distraction. It became more productive and generative, rather than distracting.
Poetics
The poetic possibilities of everything, noticed.
Did anyone text me?
What’s happening on the right?
And what is it like — the state of painting itself?
AdamWhen I’m painting it’s such an elevated sense of life, living and experience, that is just really incomparable to anything else. It’s so hyper-focused a state that part of you wants to get back to the distracted one. Did anyone text me? What’s happening on the right? It’s so familiar that you’re almost addicted to it — because painting is the opposite of that. It’s sort of like you notice everything. Which is kind of incredible.
If you could give someone that — the thing you feel when you paint?
AdamThat would be the most amazing thing. If one could make fragrances that give you, even just for a moment, the sensations I inhabit when painting. It would be fleeting, of course. It’s sort of this non-space. But — the most amazing thing.
Flow
The pause between flow states, the groove.
Is it hard to sustain that state? There’s a charge, and then a drop.
AdamIt is. Something is exercised — quite literally. It’s like running. When you start, you can feel exhausted. Then you get into that middle space, which is more like the groove. And then you can fall out of it and be totally overwhelmed again. And sometimes you can get the groove back. So painting is certainly some kind of exercise. And then this kind of fatigue sets in.
The process of making each work — how long does it take?
AdamIt depends on the scale. Weeks, months, days, years. I leave some alone. I revisit them. I go backwards and forwards. There’s a real anachronistic quality to what I do. In some ways the paintings are wildly expressionistic, but they’re also very reserved and conceptual at the same time.
There’s a complexity in reduction, isn’t there, the simple shape that takes the longest.
AdamWell, it gives room for the person coming into the situation. All things create space, but the reduction of something creates a different kind of space.
Weeks, months, days, years.
I leave some alone.
I reflected on something Adam had said very early in our conversation, almost in passing. Translation as transformation in transition. He was reflecting on Virginia, but in my mind it was an image of what we had just done together.
What you have just read is not set out in the way the conversation happened. This interview is set out in the way a painting happens. Somewhere in it, without either of us naming it, Adam described the whole act: the gathering of oneself before the first mark, the fast unexpected reaction, the humble materials pushed to evolve, the poetic possibilities of everything, the pause between flow states. And then he offered something that told me what kind of artist he is, what kind of human he is, and what he hopes his paintings invite: that the most amazing thing would be to give someone, even just for a moment, the sensations he inhabits when he paints. He offered it like a thought that had escaped him out loud, almost as an impossibility. I heard it loud and clear, and as an instruction.
A scent is a kind of performance. It invites you to inhabit a character for a while, and when the curtain closes it does not stay in the room. It leaves with you, takes on whatever meaning your own life gives it, and lets you return to that state whenever you choose, almost on remote control.
So I took Adam’s act apart, feeling by feeling, and asked what each one smells like. We did not try to recreate the studio, the concrete, the paint, the paper. That would have been the literal route. We used the abstraction of raw materials to reach for the feeling instead. The clarity of noticing everything became POETICS: cold cypress and spruce over a glacial accord, the noise dropping away and the world coming sharply into focus. The fast, volatile first reaction became REACTION: black pepper and turpentine lifting off agarwood, something you can smell moving. The pause became FLOW: abstract musks that fade below the nose and return, in and out of focus, the way attention itself does between flow states. Humble materials pushed into gesture, in Adam’s words, became EVOLVE. Here Rodrigo’s conceptual sensitivity did the work. He reached for what he calls the holy trinity, jasmine, orange blossom and tuberose, the foundational white flowers of the trade, the most familiar of materials and the ones known to yield its most complex results.
I am deeply grateful to Adam and his team, and to my dear friend and master perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux, who composed each one, translating a painter’s non-space into material with extraordinary care, and to the team at Givaudan who brought them into being with him. To carry feeling across into matter is its own act of painting, and that is what Rodrigo has done.
What struck me most about Adam was what he was careful about. He was never precise for precision’s sake. He was precise because he wanted the feeling to survive the translation, to reach people intact. I felt this in how closely he attended to everything the fragrance passes through on its way to someone: the box, the card, the words. Visual and text. Form and touch. That is what his whole practice is about, making something that opens up a real experience in someone else.
The last fragrance is ENCOUNTER, the synthesis, every sensation woven into one. It is the finished thing meeting you, the way a painting meets you. “When you encounter my paintings,” Adam told me, “I hope they conflate process and time.” So does this one.
Gathering
Patchouli, Antillean Rhum, Leather, Akigalawood.
Poetics
Cypress, Blue Spruce, Fir Balsam, Glacial Accord.
Reaction
Agarwood, Black Pepper, Frankincense, Turpentine.
Flow
Abstract Musks, Abstract Woods.
Evolve
Jasmine, Orange Blossom, Tuberose.
Encounter
The synthesis of the collection, woven into one.
Brooklyn, 09 / 2026
Interview by Kaya.
Fragrances composed by Rodrigo Flores-Roux, GIVAUDAN for Folie À Plusieurs.
Photography by Anna Pla-Narbona.
