Brian Cirmo

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 9th, 4 – 6 pm.

This event is FREE and open to the public.

Gallery Hours: Tues – Fri 12 – 5 pm, Sat 12 – 4 pm

Often working in a series, prolific painter Brian Cirmo sources western painting, literature, popular culture, and personal memories to create his narrative paintings. His works are both poignant and humorous, intelligent and sharp-witted examinations of the “human condition, such as life and death, love and loss, evolution and creationism, comedy and tragedy, fame and anonymity, conflict and harmony, and morality and immorality.”

He explains: “I have spent the past two decades traveling throughout the country visiting museums, large cities, small towns, national parks, civil war battlefields, assassination sites, graveyards, and national monuments. I am a lifelong student of the vast profundity of American music as well as a glutton for American history, literature, western painting, film, comic strips, and cartoons; all of which have consumed my nights and days. These interests and practices are harvested and used within my process to create an intertextuality in the paintings.”

Cirmo was born in Utica, NY and completed his first two years of college at Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute. He earned his B.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, and an M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the State University of New York at Albany. Cirmo has had multiple solo exhibitions including recent shows at the Burrell Roberts Triangle Gallery, Sinclair College in Dayton, OH; the Rice Gallery, McDaniel College in Westminster, MD; and the Wilson Art Gallery, Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY. He has appeared in numerous group exhibitions in museums and galleries across the country including: Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts in Boston, MA; The Hyde Collection Museum in Glens Falls, NY; Kellogg Gallery, Cal Poly University in Pomona, CA; and Antenna Gallery, New Orleans, LA. His awards include an Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency in Granville, NY; the 2017 Mona Ruth Brickman Artist of the Year Award from Albany Center Gallery; a 2009 and 2013 Juror’s award at the Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region; and in 2009 and 2015 a University at Albany Purchase Award at the Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region Exhibition. His work is in the collections of University Art Museum in Albany; Siena College; and the College of Saint Rose.

Cirmo lives and works in Albany, NY and Syracuse, NY and is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at Onondaga Community College.

This exhibition is funded in part by the Alfred Z. Solomon Charitable Trust; Adirondack Studios; the Community Exchange Foundation; Mannix Marketing; the New York State Council on The Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.