Adam Norgaard

Adam Norgaard is an American painter based in Japan, where he has lived and worked since 2014. Working primarily in oils, he creates figurative and symbolic paintings that explore crowds, solitude, mediated identity, and the emotional atmosphere of everyday spaces. His work combines flattened forms, quiet gestures, saturated color, and compressed compositions to create scenes that feel familiar yet slightly displaced.

Drawing from his sustained experience of life in Japan, Norgaard’s paintings move between urban observation and imagined symbolic space. Recent works explore blue-toned urban scenes, isolated figures, screen-mediated portraits, nocturnal imagery, and the tension between public space and private inner life. Across his paintings, figures, objects, crowds, and dreamlike landscapes become carriers of mood, memory, and quiet unease.

2009–2010 — Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA
Studies in painting, printmaking, design, and visual fundamentals.

2006–2007 — J.U.M.P. Scholarship Recipient, Japan–U.S. Mutual Understanding Program, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan / Youth For Understanding, Greater Tokyo Area, Japan

One of 25 U.S. students selected nationally for an academic exchange scholarship to attend a Japanese high school.

2026 — ADAM x TAKAO, Gallery f, Greater Tokyo Area, Japan
2023 — The Other Art Fair Los Angeles, MomentsPast
2020 — Solo Showing, Shishibone, Chiba, Japan
2015–2016 — Nagaya Project, Tokushima City, Japan
2014 — Solo Showing, The Energy Bar, Portland, Oregon