An Artist Whose Subjects Step Out of His Paintings

As evening commuters streamed into Grand Central Terminal on Tuesday, they dashed past several large oil portraits displayed on easels in Vanderbilt Hall on the way to catch their trains. Had they ventured inside the space, they would have experienced the strange sensation of mingling in the crowd with the paintings' subjects.

One of the models, Mr. Love, a 91-year-old music teacher whose real name is Wilbert D. Love II, played "O Come, All Ye Faithful" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" for attendees. Sitting at a Steinway classic grand piano a few feet from his portrait, Mr. Love looked as regal in real life as he did on canvas: dark double-breasted suit, bowler hat adorned with a feather, gold jewelry, serious expression.

In the center of the vast hall, Jeff Scott, 70, lingered beside his portrait. An actor with large eyes and angular cheekbones, Mr. Scott had been rendered sitting on a museum bench and looking dashing in a blazer, scarf and pink shoes.

"I'm an actor — I'm used to looking at myself on the tube," Mr. Scott said. "To find myself in a painting, I found the experience ineffable. I didn't have words."

Many of Mr. Dressner's subjects are people he met in Washington Square Park, who then agreed to come to his apartment and studio in Stuyvesant Town to pose for him.

He is hardly the first figurative painter to capture New Yorkers. One thinks of Alice Neel , who painted her friends and neighbors on the Upper West Side, or a contemporary artist like Jordan Casteel , who in her work reflects her community in Harlem. But Mr. Dressner's idea to bring his subjects together for the opening, and to have some of them perform during the four-day exhibition — more variety show than gallery show — adds a bit of a twist.

"I see especially this show as being almost like performance art," said Julia Felsenthal , an artist and friend of Mr. Dressner's. (She herself is a portraitist of everyday people, for her series " The Everyone I Know Project .")

"It's about community," she added. "He's taken these people that he met and committed to painting and given them a huge voice in this thing. That's so much bigger than being a portrait painter."

That evening, after another of Mr. Dressner's flamboyant models, David Rosa, entered in a tuxedo and disco danced to "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer, Mr. Dressner grabbed a microphone and welcomed the crowd of friends and strangers. He wore dark jeans, a gray blazer and a baseball cap the same shade as Bill Cunningham's jacket .

"A.I. cannot recreate what we just saw," Mr. Dressner said. "This is a humanist show — it's performances by people who are in the paintings."

Mr. Dressner lives and paints in the same apartment where he has resided since he was 12. There are few domestic comforts beyond a green leather club chair that belonged to his father; the rooms are given over to finished and unfinished canvases and painting supplies. Near the door is a hatrack with three pegs, each one holding an identical blue cap.

His grandparents, Howard and Sonia Dressner, who during his childhood lived four floors above him in the same building, were an influence on how he engages with New Yorkers, Mr. Dressner said over breakfast at Orion Diner & Grill on Second Avenue a few days before the Grand Central exhibition, his first-ever art show.

"He had charisma and charm and was very open to talking to people," he said of his grandfather. "He would also say to me, if I was bored, 'How can you possibly be bored?' He'd write me a list of all these things I could do, and the list would include, like, 'string.'"

Mr. Dressner liked to draw as a child, and, at one point, he aspired to become a fiction writer. But because his father and grandfather were lawyers, he initially followed the family path. He studied public policy at Princeton University and attended Yale Law School. In 2009, he started as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell, the white-shoe New York law firm, but he had his doubts about the profession. Earlier that same year, before his job started, Mr. Dressner had seen a Francis Bacon exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art .

"These screaming faces and raw emotions I connected with," he said. "I was feeling very angsty about this career I was starting."

Inspired, Mr. Dressner bought "Oil Painting for Dummies" at Barnes & Noble and began to teach himself to paint. He produced a series of Bacon-like triptychs — naked self-portraits — and they came out better than he expected.

But the 80-hour weeks as a corporate lawyer left him with no time for painting. So he left Sullivan & Cromwell a few years later and took a job with another law firm based in Washington, D.C., that allowed him more time for his craft. In 2018, he quit law altogether and became a full-time artist.

"I look on with wonder at how he had great courage in moving toward what moved him," said his father, Rob Dressner, now retired, who remained a lawyer despite his own artistic inclinations. "Adam was extraordinarily independent. It was very clear."

Mr. Yuna invited Mr. Dressner to his office and introduced him to Mr. Rosa and others he has since painted, and the two have since struck up a somewhat unlikely friendship.

As he began to paint Mr. Yuna's colorful friends, as well as the strangers he continued to seek out in the park and across the city, Mr. Dressner began thinking about renting out a Chelsea gallery for the show. But when he consulted with Ms. Felsenthal, his artist friend, she encouraged him to do something less conventional.

"Hello Stranger" came together with help from figures like Mr. Yuna and Chinatown Phil. Mr. Dressner, who has no gallery representation, seems uninterested in, if not oblivious to, the big-time art world. He had priced the paintings in the show himself, at between $14,000 and $20,000, and asked two friends to sit behind a folding table with a mock cash register.

Until now, Mr. Dresser had been supported largely by his old pals from college and law school who have bought his work. One of them was Tom White, a fellow Yalie who is now a partner at the firm where he once worked with the artist. He said he too owned an "early Dressner." He had traveled up from D.C. to attend the art opening on Tuesday evening.

Mr. White, 42, laughed at the way Mr. Dressner had commandeered his guest room at the Yale Club so that Mr. Love could change into his recital clothes. "I had to add 'Mr. Love' to the room reservation," he said.

Mr. White, who was dressed in a blue suit, white shirt and tie, looked around at the very New York crowd, the grand piano and the gallery of Mr. Dressner's large-scale paintings. "I have no idea how he did it," he said. "He broke from the herd."