Adam Arquilla

Adam Arquilla (b. 1991) is an oil painter and a restless multimedia experimenter. He explores techniques that span the centuries - from silverpoint drawing, practiced by medieval scribes, to contemporary digital forms like Pixel art. Arquilla has a tinkerer’s streak - building his own palette knives from found metal scraps, mixing raw pigments, and creating his own gesso from rabbit skin glue. These different threads are held together by the artist's distinctive touch - gestural and loose, with colors tending towards the deep and earthy. The strokes are often applied sparsely, the primer visible beneath.  

Arquilla replays the same images across different media. There are explorations of nature - creatures and their bones, looking timeless and mysterious, a touch of the pagan. The work also draws from the well of surrealism; Arquilla notes the influence of Max Ernst, Hieronymous Bosch, Leonora Carrington, and H.R. Giger. “You can take some kind of neurosis and really transform it into something new.” Arquilla’s figures are often fractured and contorted - perhaps in terrible pain, but maybe in the midst of some great transformation. The same entity gets sculpted in clay, drawn with ink, and then painted in oils. “I’m not quite sure why I’m obsessed with this image,” he says, but circles around to the enigma once again.

Arquilla currently lives in Palos Heights, IL with his family.