Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Elizabeth Adams has lived in New York City for most of her adult life. She is profoundly influenced by the density of people, languages, and forms in her adopted city. 

‘Double Solitaire’ was exhibited at San Art Framing May 2025-August 2025.

To see more of Elizabeth’s work, click here.

“As children, my sister and I played double solitaire for hours on end. We each had our own games going, but we also shared a “middle,” where we raced to be the first to run out of cards. Over time, we realized thatif one of us got too far ahead of the other, it was impossible for either of us to win. We shifted our strategy and redefined victory as simply not getting stuck.

My great aunt and uncle named their Florida beach cottage “Double Solitaire.” It may sound like a casual pun, but it caught ym attention. I was close to my great uncle and loved his dry wit, disarming directness, and fondness for pink pocket squares. I suspect he was bisexual. I’ll never know for certain, but regardless, I understand Double Solitaire signals a different set of creative possibilities: together and free. At the same time, the phrase evokes the loneliness, loss, and grief that can color familial and romantic relationships. My sister died of cancer when we were both in our early 20s. When I play solitaire today, I feel her presence and absence.

Drawing on personal history as well as daily life, Double Solitaire explores the paradox of oneness and towness, separatedness and connectedness. For me, each painting is it’s own kind of solitaire, full of play and experimentation, a series of wins and losses that eventually resolve into an image. Memories, artworks, people, and objects shuffle and reshuffle. Things are working well when each element plays multiple roles. A line divides and joins; a color harmonizes and clashes; the same form might evoke a building facade, a body part, and a dish of food. It can be all or none of these. Color, with its relational quality, is the consummate player.. Through its dynamic use, along with geometry, abstraction, and figuration, I strive to make work that is full of doubling, splitting, holding, and dividing like decks, like hands, like life.”

— Elizabeth Adams, 2025