In 2017, Steven Hirsch got the urge to paint his colorful life. A professional photographer his entire career, for many years Hirsch worked
for supermarket tabloids photographing “odd characters in odd situations” as he likes to describe it. At the age of 69, on impulse, he bought
paint, brushes and canvas. His paintings are his confessional.
In frenzied images that spring at once whole and fractured from dreamlike escapades and waking hours witnessing the violence and antisocial
behavior of our times, he explores his autobiography and life’s experiences in acrylics using high color and surreal compositions.
Triggered by dreams and fleeting memories, his hallucinatory juxtapositions evince lust and curiosity, war and brutality,
and America gone awry. The mysterious journey through his mind is his replete with sexual fantasy, deviant characters, alien abductees,
drug addicts, criminals, cheerleaders, and fashion victims. Observations from the street – from homelessness to style to quotidian oddities –
are woven into his vivid narratives and pulsate with life.
Born in Brooklyn in 1948, Hirsch was raised across the street from a mental institution, and as an 8 year-old became fascinated by the outpatients’
psychotic ramblings. His inquisitive nature has led him to a life where he continues to be exposed to the high drama that informs his paintings.
Hirsch now resides in a sixth-floor walk-up in an East Village tenement where he paints on a TV table by the light of his kitchen window.
He remains self-trained and earns his living photographing criminals.