Kirstin Lamb’s gridded, meticulously detailed paintings on transparent acetate are labor-intensive paintings of labor-intensive textiles and patterns. To create these embroidery paintings, Lamb starts by generating a digitized grid and painstakingly painting each individual gridded stitch by hand using acrylic and gouache on a wet media acetate. The process creates a one-to-one relationship of mark to stitch, the act of each brushstroke serving for the stitch of a needle. Lamb’s embroidery paintings draw patterns from French floral wallpaper of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, while others draw inspiration from vintage embroidery patterns from the 1950s, ’60s, and ‘70s or from the artist’s own photography, often interiors, landscapes, and portraits. In this sense, the work is a documentation of patterns spanning history, transferred to intentionally cropped compositions that read as both woven and pixelated, reframing the subject matter as distinctly contemporary.
Lamb received a BFA from Brown University and an MFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and in Berlin, Germany, featured in Hyperallergic and other publications, and is in the collection of Fidelity Investments, Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA, and in Providence College, Providence, RI, among others. The artist lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.