An avid reader of philosophy, San Francisco-based painter Adam Caldwell is currently wrapping up a new series of paintings that visualize disaster. Though they depict literal explosions, war scenes and other maladies, the works allude to disasters of the metaphysical sort. For this series, Caldwell took an interest in Western culture’s conception of the mind and the body as two separate entities, painting the interiors of mental hospitals with a pastiche of pop culture artifacts and historical tidbits. The violent, busy works point to what the artist believes is a chaos that results from the artificial partition our culture creates in the human identity. Caldwell recently invited us into his studio as he was varnishing his paintings for his upcoming two-person show, “Dirty Laundry,” at Thinkspace with Bretty Amory. Take a look at some images from the visit.