University of Richmond alum went from studying global systems to creating worlds on canvas
Alumni
Lindsay Adams walked away from her role as a management consultant to nurture the creative she’s always been.
Lindsay Adams double majored in international studies and Latin American, Latino & Iberian studies at UR, and after graduating in 2012, she landed a job in management consulting and marketing. Her career trajectory appeared clearly laid out and her next steps were easy to find. However, another path hid in the recesses of her mind, one that felt murkier and uncertain but no less of a possibility.
Five years ago, Adams made that alternate life a reality, trading in her daily commute and office for days spent wondering, studying, and painting in her artist’s studio.
Balancing act
At Richmond, Adams initially tried to pursue both — majoring in international studies and studio art. Eventually, the demands of the two time-intensive programs, plus her work as a resident assistant and president of the Black Student Alliance, became too much to manage. Adams felt she had to make a choice.
“It was really a course load decision,” she said. “I looked at my schedule and saw there needed to be a readjustment for my sanity.”
She added a major in Latin American and Iberian studies and shifted to a minor in art. She landed a job after graduation as a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton, then at Accenture, a career she pursued for a decade. But she never stopped painting.
“There were moments when I had to rebalance my time, when I had to put my effort into being on the promotion track or when work was in a busy season,” Adams said. “But even when I was taking a break from painting, I was still going to museums. I was still engaging in art in some way. It was just happening parallel to my professional career.”
Circumstantial pivot
Everything started to change for Adams in the early 2020s during the pandemic. “There were all of these things happening, but we had time to stop and listen, to reflect on our own lives and to listen to each other,” she said.
At the same time, her artwork was beginning to gain attention, and in 2021, Adams applied for Master of Fine Arts programs in painting. She enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago the following year.
Graduate school was a period of rapid growth. Adams said she had the time and space to focus solely on her work, to study art history, to experiment with new techniques and materials, and to explore conceptual ideas. “I’m a painter in the truest form,” she said. “I started looking at my own visual vernacular, but I’m also thinking about the story behind it. What are the concepts of memory, place, and imagination?”
Adams graduated in May 2025 and her first institutional solo show, “Ceremony,” opened in October at the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery at Johns Hopkins University. She was also commissioned to create a public installation entitled, Weary Blues, inspired by the Langston Hughes poem, for the Obama Presidential Center opening later this year.
Adams is now represented by Sean Kelly Gallery in New York and PATRON Gallery in Chicago. She is also an artist-in-residence at the World Trade Center through Silver Art Projects.
Deeper conversation
Adams’ life looks dramatically different than it did a few years ago. She spends hours in her studio, sometimes painting, often thinking and studying.
“I’m a liberal arts girly,” she said. “I’m always reading, always looking for the interconnectedness of things. There’s also a lot of pushing and pulling, both with the paint and wondering if I’ve successfully translated what I’m trying to say.”
Her materials and methods have evolved over time and her paintings continue to explore complex ideas and intersecting themes from her own life — a Black woman with cerebral palsy. “All of my work is not about race, or Blackness or womanhood, but it’s also about all of that,” she said. “It shows my unique interpretations, how I look at the world through this lens. It’s not evidently political; it’s a slow read and there’s a conversation behind it."
Adams believes artists and creatives offer a different interpretation of what the world could be.
“My work is not going to be the one thing that changes the world, at least not independently. This is my way of trying.”