“In Lisbeth Firmin’s paintings of the city, human figures are suspended in time. The perspective is never straightforward but always leans toward the unusual.”
Review, “Frozen in the Amber of the City,” New York Times
“Lisbeth Firmin is an American realist painter and printmaker who creates urban landscapes that explore the relationship between people and their environment. Her work captures the energy and light of a particular moment while conveying a sense of human solitude.”
New York Foundation for the Arts
“Lisbeth Firmin’s art stands on firm ground. She knows how to paint and she knows how to make monoprints so very well. There are no pretty pictures in Lisbeth’s art of people and place. Her art looks deeper, often because she knows well the individuals and landscapes she seeks to portray, to offer meaning beyond the surface at a moment in time.”
Hugh French, Director, Tides Institute and Museum of Art, Eastport, NY
“Lisbeth Firmin’s paintings are beautiful, especially the ones of New York. She paints the things between what you’re “supposed” to notice: the juxtapositions of signage and buses, traffic lights and construction work, and of course, New Yorkers themselves. She is a master of late afternoon light, that strange time of day between the end of work and the beginning of the night. But I suspect she can paint anything.”
Roz Chast
“I have had the honor and pleasure of exhibiting Lisbeth’s work at my gallery for over 20 years. I feel that Lisbeth is an artist of exceptional strength and quality. She is sure-handed yet daring in her approach, always looking for new ground to break, and has not been afraid to take her work to entirely new areas of representation.”
Marla Rice, Gallery Director, Rice Polak Gallery, Provincetown, MA
“Lisbeth Firmin continues the tradition of the “San Francisco School” important in the 1940’s and the 1950”s, in opposition to the “Abstract Expressionist” movement of New York. This group led by Diebenkorn was a continuation of the “School of Paris” (Picasso, Matisse, and Braque.) Ms. Firmin is unique in this age of the rehashing of surrealism in holding tight to the figurative. Her low-keyed choice of palette creates a modest visual use of the figure in normal surroundings.”
Marvin Saltzman, Painter
“Lisbeth Firmin’s paintings show a humane generosity. Much like Hopper, her figurative work displays profound insight into the human psyche.”
Tim Askew, Collector, CEO Corporate Rain International & Columnist for Inc. Magazine
“I have known Lisbeth Firmin for over five decades and have seen her artistic career develop from local beginnings in Provincetown to one of international celebrity. For many years Lisbeth traveled with me and a group of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain teachers, giving basic drawing skills to people who had never learned to draw. She was very good at that work, especially because she herself has such excellent drawing skills. I am very happy that she continues to teach, as well as digiligently work in her studio on her own art. My favorite subjects in her paintings are the evocative city street scenes – while she masterfully draws and paints, what stands out to me are her outstanding compositional skills.”
Dr. Betty Edwards, Author, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
“I have a great taste for all that is chiaroscuro, think Caravaggio, and I find Firmin’s paintings exceptionally compelling due to her unique use of light and shadow.”
Luca Mosca, Collector
“The excitement created from seeing Firmin’s ordinary(not) urban scenes of people walking down streets or standing on bus and train station platforms is arresting, in quite the same manner when looking at a John Sloan painting. She sees the moment which would appear on first glance to be rather innocuous, but stops it, and us, in time to see what she sees, and we can’t help but to say, “Man, there’s something good happening there.”
Review, “Lisbeth Firmin Reaffirms the Solitude of the Urban Scene”, That’s Inked Up
“Like the work of John Sloan and Edward Hopper, artists with whom she feels a strong affinity, Lisbeth Firmin’s work seeks a hefty balance between the subject and the pictorial structure that holds it together.”
Peter Malone Gallery Director, Kingsborough Community College
“Lisbeth Firmin combines discipline and freedom in this group of new monoprints: a finely tuned formal sense combined with such sureness of mark that each gesture seems inevitable. She is able to capture the fleeting moment and a specific transient light: all seems changeable and mutable except for the massive and solid New York architecture.”
Roberta Waddell, Curator of Prints, New York Public Library
“To capture light – Firmin’s foremost concern – lush vertical strokes are combined with vigorous horizontal sweeps of muted color. Her depictions are not merely a reaction, like an emotional response to a stimulus, but more precisely a calibrated representation of her experience and the forces, either atmospheric or intuitive, that harness it.”
Karen Mulcahy, Director, Michael Ingbar Gallery
“Artist Lisbeth Firmin knows the city. In her streets…you feel the romance, even when they’re empty. That’s because she blurs the edges…which leaves you telling yourself stories: Not of what you see, but what you can’t see.”
Review, “Painter Depicts Intrigue of the Untold Story,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune
“The monoprints in the 46th Chautauqua National Exhibition were absolutely stunning and well deserved the CCVA Award I selected. I noticed that they garnered a huge amount of attention from people at the exhibition.”
Michael Gitlitz, Director , Marlborough Gallery, NYC
