Adam Trest
Artist
Adam Trest's work is, on the surface, joyful and uncomplicated. Bold color, clean form, familiar iconography drawn from the rural American South. It is the kind of work that changes a room.
But the surface is a door. The color choices are deliberate. The compositions are constructed. The symbols are selected because they carry weight without announcing it. A fox on a hill. A dog in a field. A simple, saturated landscape. These images don't tell the viewer how to feel. They create the conditions for feeling, then step aside. What happens next belongs entirely to the person standing in front of the painting.
Trest is an American contemporary painter and illustrator based in Mississippi whose work spans fine art, illustration, and product design. The through line in all of it is an insistence that art should invite, not instruct.
Representation
Galleries
- Caron Gallery in Laurel and Tupelo, Mississippi
- Orleans Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana
- Adaro Art in Watersound, Florida
Licensing
Selected Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
2026, Good Day, Caron Gallery, Laurel, MS
2026, The Rest of the Story, Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Gautier, MS
2026, Bandits and Blooms, Orleans Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2025, Coast Folk, Caron Gallery, Laurel, MS
2025, Stillwater Tales, Orleans Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2024, Azul, Caron Gallery, Laurel, MS
2024, Harmony, Festival South, Hattiesburg, MS
2023, Storytelling, Cullis Wade Depot, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS
2022, The Road to the Lantern House, de Grummond Children's Literature Collection, Hattiesburg, MS
2022, Mississippi: Lost and Found, Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience, Meridian, MS
Group Exhibitions
2026, Paper Fools, Gail Keenan Art Center, Long Beach, MS
2024, FLORA/FAUNA, Gail Keenan Art Center, Long Beach, MS
2023, Lauren Rogers Museum of Art 100th Anniversary Invitational Exhibition, Laurel, MS
Books + Press
Published Works
Azul: A Story Told in Blue, Adam Trest Studio, 2024
Bless Your Heart: A Field Guide to All Things Southern, Running Press Adult, 2025
The Lantern House, Little, Brown, and Company, 2022
Press
Clevenger, Cayman. "Bandits and Blooms." Country Roads Magazine, 2026.
Fontenot, Jordan Lahaye. "On the Cover: Selections from Bandits & Blooms." Country Roads Magazine, 2026.
Clevenger, Cayman, "Blending Nature and Nostalgia-The Art of Adam Trest." Delta Magazine, 2025.
Clevenger, Cayman. “Brushstrokes of Memory: Adam Trest.” Inside Northside, Mar-Apr 2024, pp. 12-16.
Clements, Caroline Sanders. “Mapping Southern Memories.” Garden&Gun, March 13, 2018.
