Claire Lambe

Claire Lambe is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and educator. Born in southern Ireland, she is a graduate of Ireland’s National College of Art and Design (NCAD), in Dublin and holds a Master of Fine Art from the City University of New York at Brooklyn College.

Claire now lives in the legendary arts colony town of Woodstock in upstate New York. In addition to working to her art-making, Claire writes commentary in the art section of Roll, an on-line arts magazine, and she is an instructor at the Woodstock School of Art.

For much of 2015, Claire was artist-in-residence at her local public library in Woodstock. She engaged in a portrait project where library patrons were invited to sign up to be painted. The aim was to bring art to the wider community and vice versa, and to democratize the genre of portraiture. “We are human and are drawn to other humans – the portrait is a very elemental way to reach out. It is also a terrific vehicle to explore other more politically charged ideas, such as in “Paean to 1791” which is commemorates the struggles of many nations for self determination, and “Our Child” which is to do with global warming.

In her other mixed media work, which is often drawn from memory, dreams, and fears, the starting point is almost always the figure – sometimes overtly, other times the figure disappears under the weight of other information. She describes her process thus: “I gather, or invent, evidence of a life, an archive of drawings, photographs, letters, snippets from newspapers, lists from the phone book, maps, etc. The process of making the artwork is a process of losing, reclaiming, and again losing the evidence and, in so doing, discovering what survives: what is the residue that is left that poses the question of meaning.”