Adam Dressner’s Portraits Are for the People
BY SOPHIA JUNE
If you’ve got a face, Adam Dressner wants to paint it.
Dressner, a former corporate lawyer, has made a name for himself as a self-taught painter known for wheeling his “art cart” of painting supplies to Washington Square or Central Park and making loose, expressive plein-air portraits of the eccentric New Yorkers he meets.
This past week, Dressner took his cart to 1969 Gallery in Tribeca, where he sat beneath a brown butcher paper sign reading “Fine Art Portraits” in Tom Sachs studio-style scribble, completing 18 paintings in the days leading up to “Hello Stranger 2,” his debut solo gallery exhibition, which opened Friday night.