Adam Laurence Hedley | Sour Earth

Adam Laurence Hedley (b. 1985, High Wycombe, United Kingdom) is a British artist living and working in Bristol. He received a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Buckinghamshire New University in 2008 and works primarily in oil on canvas, alongside watercolour, gouache and charcoal on paper.

Hedley’s practice occupies an elusive space between abstraction, figuration and the natural world. Built gradually through translucent washes and dry-brushed layers, his paintings allow images to appear, overlap and recede. Botanical forms, ancient sites, maps, lichen, roots, manuscripts and woodland environments enter the compositions as fragments rather than fixed subjects, creating surfaces that feel discovered or excavated over time.

Through subtle shifts in colour, light and depth, Hedley creates paintings that hold multiple places and histories at once. Their blurred, richly worked surfaces invite prolonged looking, revealing new associations as familiar forms emerge and dissolve. Hedley has exhibited throughout the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. In 2018, he co-founded Caraboo Projects in Bristol, an artist-led organisation supporting experimental exhibitions, collaboration and community engagement.