Introducing the First Crit Lab Community Fellow: Deborah Freedman! @debpaint
Thanks to a wonderfully generous anonymous donor, we’re thrilled to announce the Crit Lab Community Fellowship—a new merit-based award recognizing exceptional artists in our community.
The first-ever recipient is Deborah Fredman, whose evocative landscapes carry forward the legacy of the Hudson River School while confronting the realities of environmental change. For over 25 years, she has painted The Pond, a seemingly timeless body of water in the Catskills, only to witness its stillness disrupted by political and climate instability. In her recent works, the human figure merges with the landscape, deepening her meditation on connection, loss, and resilience.
#CritLabCommunity #DeborahFredman #CritLabFellowship #ArtAndClimate #HudsonRiverSchool #thecritlab #deborahfreedman #patriciasuzannemiranda
Thrilled to showcase the work of our amazing Fall Crit Lab Artists, today @debpaint ✨
Deborah Freedman’s primordial turmoils of shadow selves dancing in the aliveness of solitudes.
- @patriciasuzannemiranda
“I create metaphoric landscapes in the tradition of the 19th Century Hudson River School painters and the early 20th Century. artists who added symbolism and abstraction to their depictions. Bierstadt and Cole, Dove and Hartley are among my favorites.
My work is increasingly influenced by the environmental changes in the Hudson Valley and beyond. The Pond is a small body of water near my property in the Catskill Mountains that I have been observing and painting for twenty-five years. While the pond appears unchanged over time, what had been an idyllic landscape has become disturbed in my mind, a metaphor of the impact of political and climate change. The paintings and prints of the pond are an investigation of a dreamlike landscape that is threatened. The pictorial space is warped or disturbed echoing my disquiet about the instability of our environment - as if there is a hole in the world that needs to be healed.”
An Alternative Ecosystem for Artists
The Crit Lab is a dynamic, critical community for artists beyond academia, fostering a space of empathy, radical optimism, and rigorous discourse. Here, artists meet in an act of creation over destruction, fueled by shared vision and innovative dialogue.
The Crit Lab offers graduate-level critique seminars tailored for working artists. With a strong pedagogical foundation, we provide structured, critical feedback within small, ongoing groups, empowering artists to deeply refine and propel their work within the unique contexts of their practices and lives.
@thecritlab@patriciasuzannemiranda #critlabartists #deborahfreedman #criticalthinkingradicallistening #critlabartist #criticalthinking #radicallistening #critlabcritique #artistrunculture #artistsinventingnewparadigms #thecritlab #critlabartistsrockinit #critlabfall2024
Artist Spotlight from Tuesday PM Main Lab, amazing Deborah Freedman ✨
@debpaint
borahfreedman.com
Deborah Freedman creates metaphoric landscapes that draw from the legacy of the Hudson River School, weaving together observation, symbolism, and abstraction.
Through painting and printmaking, Freedman reimagines this landscape as dreamlike yet unsettled,where pictorial space bends and fractures, echoing a sense of instability and a quiet call for healing.
Recurring across series, The Pond becomes both witness and metaphor, informed by moments of collective rupture. More recently, the human figure enters these works, further entwining body and environment.
#ContemporaryPainting #LandscapeArt #EnvironmentalArt #TheCritLab
Almost done! Our hero Richard Pasquarelli. See his work, with Joel Longenecker, Mathew Letzelter, Frank Bowling, Susan Bee, Catherine Kernan, Kumi Korf, Shirley Irons, Allison Gildersleeve and Peggy Cyphers at the Brooklyn Fine Art Print fair opening tomorrow night at Brooklyns Powerhouse-April 12!
