Mixing and combining opposites, playing with analogies and ambiguity, Binnie Birstein creates a distorted mix of reality, imagination and cultural critique. She investigates the relationships of history and universality merged with her own personal experience.

Her work is dark, ambiguous, dream-like and dissonant with a sense of mystery and unease. Her private iconography refers to the darkness in human character, to the evil of war and persecution, to the loss and despair that life can bring. And yet out of her joy and excitement at working the paint, in layering colors and experimenting with textures and surfaces, and in creating these strange figures and spaces, another side of life emerges. Life also has its pleasures and rewards. There are many viewpoints and emotional responses and no right answers.


Ms. Birstein is an award-winning artist originally from New York City. Her most recent solo shows were “a wrinkle in time” at ArtPlace Gallery in Fall 2010 and “just binnie” at Fairfield Arts Council in 2008. She was awarded Best in Show by Ann Temkin in “Art of the Northeast” at Silvermine Guild in 2002. Other awards include first prize in “Thinking in Wax” juried by Joanne Mattera and honorable mention in "Particular Places" curated by Bernard Chaet. She organized an exhibition by members of New England Wax at Fairfield Arts Council in 2010. She has shown throughout the country, extensively in the Northeast in many prestigious exhibitions and invitationals.

She has participated in all of the International Encaustic Conferences, two as a presenter and taught at this year’s post-con. She is a faculty member at Creative Arts Workshop and offers private instruction from her studio in Connecticut.