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.
