Four landscape paintings by BPSI Member, Lewis Kirshner, featuring different seasons, are on display in the library this fall. Read Dr. Kirshner’s artist statement below to learn about his sources of inspiration.
I took up oils again to learn about portrait painting from a St Johnsbury, Vermont, artist, Ed Kadunc, who was immensely helpful for theory and practice. Later, upon relocating to Amsterdam, I continued lessons from another talented teacher, Charissa van der Kerk. It helps to know what you are doing, especially when it comes to mixing colors. The current works on display portray familiar scenes from our rural Vermont neighborhood, which has stood as a reassuring constant presence during our residence over the COVID year. Some of these paintings display a broader palette than might be apparent at first glance. The bucolic landscape with its accretion of centuries of human choices about domesticating living space holds continuing fascination for me. The changes over 150 years have been subtle, but the world of family farms is fading and a traditional culture with it. I like to paint these scenes in different seasons. They are representational depictions that reflect personal moods and interpretations, while reminding me of the people with whom I share these places.
Lewis A. Kirshner, MD, is a Corresponding Member of the Faculty at Harvard Medical School and a Training and Supervising Analyst Emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He is currently living in Amsterdam and has been a visiting professor in Lyon, France, and a Fulbright senior fellow in Ghent, Belgium. His numerous publications have treated developments in French psychoanalysis and the work of Lacan, Winnicott, and Ferenczi. He is the author of Having A Life: Self Pathology after Lacan (2004), Between Winnicott and Lacan: A Clinical Engagement (2011), and Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis: A Model for Theory and Practice (2017). Click here to watch Lewis Kirshner’s interview to Stephen Sternbach about his most recent book recorded in the BPSI Library in 2018.
