Kirstin Lamb in Go Local Prov
In the Studio With Painter Kirstin Lamb - Inside Art With Michael Rose
April 02, 2025
By Michael Rose
Photo: Michael Rose
In her Pawtucket studio, painter Kirstin Lamb is preparing. She has a solo exhibition this September at the well-known Gallery NAGA on Boston’s Newbury Street. Her studio walls are lined with works in process that evoke woodland scenes, locally and far away. Impressive in vision and technical acumen, Lamb is one of the region’s most exciting contemporary painters.
Lamb has an undergraduate degree from Brown and completed a Post Baccalaureate Certificate at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts before earning her MFA at RISD. She has participated in competitive residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Wassaic Project, among others. Respected in the field, she was awarded a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Painting in 2020. Fidelity Investments, the Fruitlands Museum, Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, Providence College, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Arts Center all own her work.
Asked what it means to her to be based in the Ocean State, Lamb says, “I love being in Rhode Island. I fell in love with Providence as a student and really got excited when I had the opportunity to come back and make work here. I have encouraged friends I studied with to come back too. There is such a warm community here for artists, I’m grateful. I love working in Pawtucket, the textile mills feel extra important to my fiber influenced work. I also love that this was the cradle of the industrial revolution in the US. It feels good that artists are here working now.”
Lamb’s art has been exhibited throughout the Northeast and beyond. In addition to shows at Cade Tompkins Projects in Providence and Overlap Gallery in Newport, her paintings and mixed media pieces have appeared at local universities and at galleries throughout New York City as well as at the New York Public Library and SPRING/BREAK Art Show, where she earned praise. Through May 1 she is the subject of a solo show at Waldo Custom Framing in Randolph, Massachusetts.
Photo: Michael Rose
The paintings that will be shown in Boston this fall highlight the artist’s love for walks in the woods, something she hopes viewers feel. Lamb says, “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'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.”
Lamb’s works leverage a layered process. She uses her own photographs of woods as the basis for cross-stitch patterns. These are then used as the backdrop for her paintings, which are executed in acrylic on Duralar, a plastic film that she later has professionally adhered to panels.The effect is a mix of painted textile and Pointallist image. Up close, they are flurries of multi-colored dots, and when the viewer steps away, an intricate image forms. In addition to these pieces, she also paints studies of her own, thoughtfully curated studio that are full of detail and humor.
Photo: Michael Rose
Instructing emerging artists has been an important part of her practice, and Lamb has taught at RISD, Providence College, Salve Regina University, and Clark University.
Asked about how teaching factors into her practice, Lamb is effusive, answering, “Teaching is something I fell in love with as a graduate student at RISD. I feel grateful to my many wonderful mentors for encouraging me to teach. I don’t think I initially thought of teaching as an option for me. For me, the teaching I do informs my work, creates opportunities for crazy still life set-ups in classrooms and in my studio, and allows me to reconsider drawing and painting basics anew each semester. I have made paintings about teaching drawing concepts or limited palettes in painting. I really get so much out of meeting each group of students. I have been blessed with remarkable and talented students.”
Alongside her busy and fruitful studio practice, Lamb also curates. In June, Newport’s Overlap Gallery will premiere Thicket, a salon-style group exhibition she assembled. An energetic maker, Lamb is a talented local artist New Englanders should know.
Learn more about Kirstin Lamb at her website www.nitsrik.com, or by following her on Instagram @kirstin.lamb.
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