Adam Dressner is a self-taught visual artist from New York City. Working from his East Village studio in the same neighborhood where he grew up, Dressner’s figurative oil paintings explore the emotional, psychic space of his subjects.
A graduate of Yale Law School (J.D.), Cambridge (M.Phil. Criminology), and Princeton University (A.B.), Dressner practiced as an attorney prior to working as an artist. Beyond legal advocacy, he researched the infringement of civil liberties in relation to video surveillance and facial recognition technologies. This expertise brought him to the U.K. as a Fulbright scholar, where he produced scholarship illuminating the effects of mass surveillance on freedom of speech. These experiences contribute to the powerful psychological dimension in Dressner’s work, and the personal ethics surrounding his approach to painting the people he meets on his long walks throughout New York City.
In 2021, Dressner made a video, “My progress as a painter” to tell his story.