Artist Statement

In my work, I transport viewers into realms that exist at the threshold of the real and the imagined — worlds drawn from mythology, folklore, and the deep well of childhood wonder. Sometimes these worlds are built from scratch: elaborate theatrical sets, hand-constructed props, sewn costumes. Sometimes they already exist — in a stand of trees, a patch of failing light, a particular quality of mist — and my work is to find them, enter them, and reveal what was always there. There is no AI in my work.

These constructed and discovered worlds are populated by characters who embody the archetypes we carry — figures who protect, guide, and illuminate the hidden dimensions within our surroundings. My narratives draw from ancient traditions, inherited histories, and the specific textures of place. The result is imagery that holds multiple registers at once: the intimate and the epic, the familiar and the strange.

In my conceptual portraiture, I extend this vision outward by inviting individuals into the worlds I create. Each session is a collaborative ritual in which the subject's essence merges with the dreamscape — producing images that transcend conventional portraiture and become visual poems about identity, imagination, and transformation. These portraits ask how we exist between reality and fantasy, between the ordinary and the extraordinary.

The culmination of this process is always a photograph. But its creation involves an intricate practice of theatrical storytelling — set design, costume, light, and presence. The resulting images function like storyboards: they can be experienced individually or as sustained narrative series. My aim is to make visible the realms of magic that have always existed alongside our own.

Bio

Adrien Broom is a fine art photographer based in New York City and Connecticut, known for cinematic, handcrafted imagery that moves between constructed theatrical worlds, the charged landscapes she finds and activates in the field, and the storied interiors of historic spaces that become backdrops and collaborators in their own right. Working entirely without digital generation or AI, she builds sets, designs costumes, and orchestrates light — or arrives somewhere that already holds a world — and in both cases produces photographs of sustained narrative depth.

Her work is currently on view at the Mark Twain Museum in Hartford, CT (through summer 2026), with a solo exhibition opening at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY in fall 2026. Previous solo exhibitions include the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (Norman, OK), the Florence Griswold Museum (Old Lyme, CT), the Edward Hopper Museum (Nyack, NY), and the Hudson River Museum (Yonkers, NY). Her touring exhibition A Colorful Dream has traveled to more than a dozen institutions since 2019.

Raised in Lyme, CT — one of America's oldest art colonies — Broom's sensibilities were shaped early by her family's deep involvement in the arts. Her education in Florence and London informed a distinctive aesthetic that merges classical painting traditions with contemporary photographic practice. Drawing upon a multidisciplinary background in animation, fine art, and decorative arts, she creates work that is as much about the process of construction as it is about the final image.

Broom's practice spans gallery and museum exhibitions, private commissions, and conceptual portraiture — all unified by a consistent artistic vision and a commitment to the handmade. She is based in New York City and Connecticut.