BIOGRAPHY
Caley Adams is a Brooklyn-based artist originally from Maine, where the raw beauty and quiet austerity of the landscape first shaped her understanding of contrast, imperfection, and resilience. Her practice is rooted in painting, with a focus on abstract florals that explore both delicacy and disruption. Over the course of twenty years, her creative process has evolved in parallel with her own journey of restoration and self-discovery, becoming a way to transform pain into presence and fracture into form.
PROCESS
Caley’s paintings often begin with a sense of fragility, built from translucent layers of color that unfold like petals into luminous floral abstractions. Against this softness, moments of rupture appear in abrupt swaths of paint, fractured edges, or unsettled passages that interrupt the surface. This approach grew
out of a pivotal discovery while reworking a painting. Frustrated, she paused,
turned the canvas on its sides, and marked the areas she disliked with strips of white paper as temporary corrections. The white pieces, at first tools of critique, revealed themselves as part of the composition. They suggested bandages, coverings that acknowledge rather than erase, and opened a new way
of working.
From that moment, repair became central to her process. Unsettled areas are no longer concealed but tended to. Sometimes she applies paper as bandages, other times she paints bold planes of color that act as coverings in their own right. Once integrated into the surface, these gestures transform from corrective marks into structural elements, allowing the painting to hold both softness and interruption within the same field.
From that moment, repair became central to her process. Unsettled areas are no longer concealed but tended to. Sometimes she applies paper as bandages, other times she paints bold planes of color that act as coverings in their own right. Once integrated into the surface, these gestures transform from corrective marks into structural elements, allowing the painting to hold both softness and interruption within the same field.
THESIS
At its core, Caley’s work is an exploration of healing, transformation, and renewal. Each painting mirrors the long, layered process of restoration, where wounds are acknowledged, tended to, and gradually integrated into a more complete whole. The floral forms speak to both vulnerability and endurance, their delicate surfaces bearing the marks of disruption yet persisting in beauty. Through the act of bandaging what feels broken, Caley reclaims and reimagines moments of rupture as opportunities for connection and growth. Over time, the process shifts from repair to adornment. The bandages, once functional, become decorative and celebrated, transforming visible scars into sites of strength and grace. This evolution reflects the deeper rhythm of her practice: that healing is not a return to what once was, but the creation of something entirely new, more layered, and more whole.