Paintings
20 works
Adam Handler Find Me Ghost For Sale
Adam Handler
Find Me Ghost, 2021
Oil stick and pencil on heavy weight paper Framed in a white 1 in. frame, ¾ in float mount on white mat, with plexiglass
9 x 12 in 22.9 x 30.5 cm
About this work
Adam Handler is a New York–based painter celebrated for his bold, childlike figures and emotionally charged visual language. Growing up around his grandparents’ picture-framing studio and later studying classical drawing in Italy, he developed a practice that blends intuitive mark-making with thoughtful composition. His work embraces immediacy—bright acrylic fields, expressive oil-stick gestures, and simplified silhouettes—creating an aesthetic that feels both spontaneous and deeply intentional.Handler draws heavily from personal memory and the relationships that shape him, especially the women in his life. These influences appear through recurring motifs such as oversized eyes, elongated limbs, ghosts, flowers, and intimate domestic symbols. While playful at first glance, his paintings carry currents of vulnerability and introspection, reflecting themes of imagination, loneliness, love, and connection.By flattening space and amplifying expressive detail, Handler turns each figure into an emotional proxy—raw, direct, and relatable. His work functions like a visual diary, merging innocence with complexity and offering viewers a space to see parts of their own inner world reflected back.
Price on Application
Auction History
Ghost Buddy Abduction In A Colourful Dream · Adam Handler · Phillips · 2025-05 · $0
Devil Bee Butterfly Being Charmed by Ghost · Adam Handler · Artsy Auction · 2024-07 · $1,250
Screaming Snake and Ghost Buddy in Layway Suns · Adam Handler · Sotheby's · 2022-11 · $0
Pajama Girl and Ghost Reclining in Shortcake Sky · Adam Handler · Sotheby's · 2022-09 · $574
Ghost Buddy Abduction in the Swirling Haze of Night · Adam Handler · Sotheby's · 2022-07 · $1,948
More from this series
More series by Adam Handler
About the Works on Paper Series
Adam Handler's Works on Paper series presents a haunting exploration of absence and presence through his distinctive ghost compositions. This compelling collection includes seminal pieces such as Find Me Ghost, Behind You Ghost, Caught Your Scent Ghost, Coming Home Ghost, Come With Me Ghost, and But I Love You Ghost, each investigating themes of loss, longing, and spectral memory.
Executed across works on paper, Handler employs a delicate yet emotionally resonant approach that transforms the ephemeral nature of his medium into a conceptual strength. The series demonstrates the artist's sophisticated understanding of negative space and form, creating figures that exist in the liminal space between presence and disappearance.
These works have garnered significant attention within contemporary art circles, appealing to collectors drawn to conceptually rigorous practice with emotional depth. The intimate scale and accessible medium of these pieces make them particularly sought-after acquisitions for those building meaningful collections.
Each work in the series remains available for purchase. Enquire for current availability and pricing.
About Adam Handler
Adam Handler grew up in Queens, New York, and spent much of his childhood at his grandparents' framing factory in the city, where his interest in art first took hold. He later studied life drawing in Italy and graduated from Purchase College with a degree in art history in 2008.
Handler works primarily in oil stick, producing bold, colorful compositions built around a small set of recurring characters, including ghosts, wide eyed girls, and bats. His figures are simplified and direct, drawing on a deliberately naive visual style while carrying deeper themes of memory, loss, and connection. Much of his work is personal, shaped by his relationships with his wife, mother, and grandmother, and by the people and experiences that have influenced him over time.
His paintings favor earth tones and pastels, with an emphasis on scale and spontaneity. Handler has described his process as intuitive, working from emotion rather than a fixed plan, which gives his compositions their loose, immediate quality.
Handler has exhibited widely, with solo and group shows across the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia, including presentations in New York, Seoul, and Mykonos. His work has also appeared at major art fairs, among them Art New York, Art Market Hamptons, and the Armory Print Fair.
He continues to live and work in New York.