The best part of taking classes in studio art is the opportunity to talk with professional artists: to pick their brains apart and learn about their artistic philosophy in a career which requires extraordinary psychological determination. I had the chance to sit down and speak with Brian Cirmo, an internationally exhibited artist running the J-Term course “Painting in Oil,” which focuses on his medium of choice. Clearly past the point of treating art as a “hobby,” Cirmo has deservedly won the recognition and career stability which few artists enjoy.
Through his Zoom camera, Cirmo gave me a tour of his studio in Albany, NY: a modestly sized room in his home. Brushes neatly line the corner next to his current work in progress. A broad shelf lined to the brim with records and books loomed over the room.
When I asked about his inspirations, Cirmo immediately described the moment he heard Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” in the film “Dazed and Confused.” What was an average day at the theater his junior year of high school became a crucial juncture of cultural discovery.
“I was just hooked, because [Hurricane] is about an actual person, a boxer named Reuben Carter, a black man who was falsely accused of murder and imprisoned… And I knew nothing about this. All I knew was [Dylan] was singing the song and telling this story. I'd never heard a song like that before — it was like a film. The next day, I went to the record store, and I bought that record, and that was it. His music became the hub of my whole kind of creative endeavor.”
Smokers, 2021. Oil on canvas 55 x 75 in.
Dylan’s expert storytelling immediately found its way into Cirmo’s work. When you look at Cirmo’s compositions, you almost feel as though you have flipped to an illustrated page in a book, or are paused on a particular scene in a movie. The framing of painted elements, with expansive, simplified shapes, invites the viewer to focus on the characters Cirmo has created.
“For me, when I started looking at painting, I got the same kind of sensation I would get when I heard that Dylan song or when I watched a film or read a novel,” he said.
The carefully crafted simplicity of Cirmo’s paintings evoke this sense of comradery and familiarity with his subjects. A man donning a Boston Bruins shirt rests his heavy head in his hand, solemnly gazing downwards while sitting on a park bench. Dejected smokers, who look more like the kind of people you’d bump into at a gas station at 1 a.m. rather than the subject of an oil painting, strain under the weight of their exhaustion and eye bags.
“My characters are like the every-person character. They're not ‘interesting’ in the traditional sense. They are like anti-heroes, in a sense. I think they're all vulnerable in some way. Those kinds of attitudes come from the people my family and the people I grew up around.”
Rabbit Thoughts, 2022. Oil on canvas 50 x 50 in.
Cirmo also shared about his working-class background, which contextualizes the scale of his discovery of Bob Dylan. As a kid, he had little exposure to art and history.
“My mom was just constantly working, just to kind of keep things afloat. My brother and I were very close in age, so we just kind of hung out outside, played with local friends, and played sports. I never looked at painting when I was a kid. I never really went to plays or concerts or museums,” Cirmo said.
He lamented that he had felt behind by the time he attended college due to his sparse experience in art. He was a C student in high school with little ambition until he discovered artmaking. Despite this perceived inadequacy, he recounts this time with absolute confidence in his future trajectory as an artist.
After he finished his Bachelors in Fine Arts, he received a full scholarship to graduate school for fine arts in Upstate New York. When he could no longer sustain his painting practice — or his livelihood — from just his savings, Cirmo worked several jobs at once to continue what was most important to him.
Loom, 2018. Oil on canvas 52 × 80 in.
“I taught two or three or four classes, sometimes at two or three different local colleges. I worked the midnight to 8 a.m. shift at security dispatch for one of the colleges. In between those I slept and worked in my studio, which was my kitchen. It became a routine and as long as I could make the paintings, everything else was okay.”
As a full time student, my day to day is full of excuses of why I am too busy to pursue art. I was astounded at Cirmo’s work ethic and fortitude — his intense clarity of trajectory and present action seems to decisively defeat any overthinking. Cirmo told The Campus that after 15 years of this grueling routine and reaching exhaustion and career burnout, he began seriously applying to full-time positions.
“So I would sit at my job from midnight to 8 a.m. at my desk, and I would apply to exhibitions for grants, for residencies and for teaching positions. Little by little, I get a show here, I get a show there… Ultimately [I] got a full time teaching position out in Syracuse.”
I was again curious about his psychological approach to these extremely competitive applications. The veteran painter offered simple insight, treating my constant existential mullings on the feasibility of becoming a professional artist and responded plainly:
“The rejections are endless. But I was dedicated because I knew this is what I wanted to do. I knew that the work I was making was getting better and better, even though no one wanted to show it. You know, I wasn't getting tons of shows.”
Of course. Brooding to and fro on whether I should or should not pursue art seriously only takes time away from actually furthering my skills, building my portfolio and even making such a career path a possibility.
Cirmo’s words struck a chord in me about disregarding external validation. There is only one thing you can rely on if you want to pursue art: internally derived validation and security in your own inspirations and vision.
“And I just knew that it was a stamina game. It's not about who's the most talented, skillful artist. It really is how dedicated you are to this life, in this process of being a creative person, being an artist,” he explained.
Check out more of Cirmo’s work on https://briancirmo.com/home.html and on his instagram @b_cirmo. He teaches at Pratt Munson in Utica, NY.
June Su '27 (he/him) is the Senior Multimedia Editor.
He is a political science major also studying studio art and Spanish. June spent this last summer working for Artchange, Inc. as an intern working to release their new documentary, Cruise Boom, to academic and general audiences. On campus, he is a part of Students for Justice in Palestine and enjoys painting the Vermontese scenery.
