Kirstin Lamb
Kirstin is a painter living in Providence, Rhode Island and working in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. She studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating with an MFA in 2005, and she received her AB in Visual Art and Literatures in English from Brown University in 2001. Kirstin’s work has been shown in venues across the country and abroad, recently showing at the Wassaic Project in Amenia, NY, Sarah Crown Gallery in Tribeca, NY, Overlap Gallery in Newport, RI, Geary in Millerton, NY, Cade Tompkins Projects in Providence, RI, Spring Break Art Fair in NY, the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA and Providence College Galleries in Providence, RI, among others. She has attended residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Bunker Projects, the Wassaic Project, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, The Ora Lerman Trust Soaring Gardens Artist Residency, and the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation. Kirstin recently completed a two-year contract curator position at The Yard, Williamsburg, a coworking space in Brooklyn that hosts solo and group shows quarterly, and has begun planning online and new curatorial projects in New England. Her work is in the collections of Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA, the Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA, and Providence College, Providence, RI, among others. Kirstin’s work is represented by Gallery NAGA in Boston.
Side of the Trail in Rhode Island 2024
Acrylic and Acrylic Gouache on Duralar 80 x 60 in
Artist Statement
I make labor-intensive paintings of gridded dots. These paintings frequently document fabric, wallpaper, and photo-based source material. My most recent body of work has turned to the woods as its lone subject and focus.
I’m currently developing a body of paintings imaging New England woods that I have walked through on foot. The works are made from digital patterns I make from photographs, which I then paint on a wet media acetate. The patterns are derived from the photographs, but also abstract and blur the photograph to a greater or lesser degree, depending upon scale and complexity of the image. I like to consider it a contemporary way of documenting our extraordinary woodland spaces of North America, in the tradition of panoramic and scenic wallpaper.
I’m looking for a painting whose marks land between textile stitch, Impressionist mark and digital pixel. The paintings I’m making blur between a focused Photorealism, a computer-generated pattern and a fetishized repetition of an acrylic paint mark. Much of what I do is mix and organize color. There is high labor behind each work, yet the effect is immediate and present.
I want the experience of my paintings to be much like walking in the woods. Surrounded by a fabric of green, an excess of detail, the labor of making the painting stands as a devotional homage to the complexity and slow growth of the forest. The painting space both slows you down to a single greenspace and holds you within many particular and singular snapshots in time.
I hope to image the woods in its current state, as it exists now, near me. We have precious resources in both humble scrub brush or elegant old growth forests, all worth documenting as they are seen in our moment.
Additional Information:
Artist’s website: Kirstin Lamb
Instagram: @kirstin.lamb
Part of Growing the NetWorks
This artist was selected by a past NetWorks Rhode Island participant as part of Growing the NetWorks — a 2025 exhibition presented by WaterFire Providence, at the WaterFire Arts Center, celebrating peer-nominated artists from across Rhode Island. Learn more at waterfire.org/growingthenetworks
Highlighting the work of selected artists who have played vital roles in shaping the contemporary visual arts community in Rhode Island. This collection of brief video portraits provides a window into the lives, practices, and cultural contributions of professional artists.
