Still Life is a solo exhibition of paintings and prints by Lisbeth Firmin. Long known for her work chronicling the streets of New York City and its inhabitants, Firmin’s body of work illuminates the solitary experiences of individuals who may be alone, but not necessarily lonely.

 

In a collection that spans her creative practice over the last 20 years, we see the most recent stages of an artistic career that began with the documentation of the streets of New York City, filled with figures in motion. Over the years, perhaps mirroring her own personal trajectory, her works evolved to focus more on figures in repose, on park benches or in the subways. 

 

Firmin states, “I consider myself an expressionist realist, and in my work I transcribe the real world, especially the relationship between people and their environment, and how light and shadow describe a particular moment.”

 

Firmin’s skill at conjuring the magical light of the “golden hour” is unsurpassed. Working in a subdued palette, she uses blocks of color to recreate moments of lone figures and couples lost in thought, in shadows or lit by the unearthly glow of a city sunset. She depicts people in their own insular worlds, living in a state of beauty or possibly estrangement. 

 

In a reconfiguration of the concept of a still life, Firmin often edits out secondary figures from her original source material. Recreating her impressions from an internal space, she develops images of other people living in their own internal spaces. Exploring the relativity of alone-ness, she taps into the universal sense of containment one can feel, even in a city as crowded with others as New York.

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MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST: 

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Lisbeth Firmin is a contemporary American realist whose paintings and monotypes explore the relationship between people and their urban environment, while simultaneously capturing the energy and light of a specific moment in time. Her urban landscapes, following in the tradition of earlier realists such as John Sloan, George Bellows, and Edward Hopper, depict a feeling of human solitude, of people headed somewhere undisclosed. 

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Firmin has been drawing and painting since childhood, and studied independently with printmaker Seong Moy, and painters Philip Malicoat, Victor Candell, and Leo Manso in Provincetown in the early 70’s. Her paintings and prints are found in several public collections including the New York Historical Society; Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA; Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY; Fleming Museum, Burlington, VT; Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY; The Tides Institute & Museum of Art, Eastport, ME; University of Texas; Cape Cod Museum; and Hofstra University. Her work is part of the corporate collections of Pfizer, Meditech Corporation, Thomson Reuters, Bankers Trust, Odyssey, Fidelity Investments, Cablevision, and Zurich Insurance. Private collectors include M. Night Shayamalan, Roz Chast, Robert Rothchild, Jack Beal and Sondra Freckelton, and Tom Morgan and Erna McReynolds.

Firmin’s work has been written about in The New York Times, Provincetown Arts, The Boston Globe, Constellation 617, Arts Magazine, American Art Collector, and numerous other publications.

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Click Here for Artist CV

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Please contact info@c24gallery.com for more information.

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