Claire Lichtenstein

Claire Lichtenstein (b. 1984) is a South African artist working in abstract painting and sculptural paint forms. Her practice explores the intersection of inner emotional experience and material process. After beginning her artistic journey in 2011 and studying under the mentorship of Ricky Burnett from 2012, she committed fully to her studio practice in 2014. Her work is marked by sensitivity to colour, gesture, and texture, often holding dynamic tensions between presence and absence, fluidity and stillness.

Lichtenstein’s recent solo exhibition (e)mersion (2025) was presented at Candice Berman Gallery, Johannesburg. She has participated in RMB Latitudes Art Fair (2024, 2025) and Turbine Art Fair (2019). Other group exhibitions include The Spring Collection at Roche Bobois (2024), The Grand Opening of 223 Jan Smuts, and Canvases in Bloom (2023). She also had a solo feature with David Krut Projects (2017) titled Waterdreamer.

Claire Lichtenstein is represented by Berman Contemporary.

My driving force is the desire to transform internal experience into something visible, felt, and beautiful – to give form to emotional memory and reclaim my voice through process, gesture, and material. I create large-scale paintings and sculpted paint forms that carry presence, vulnerability, and strength. Nature is a constant collaborator – its textures, moods, and shifting light reflect the emotional landscapes I move through. Water, in particular, appears often: immersive, fluid, and expansive.

My work is shaped by both my inner world and the environment I live in, in Wilderness, South Africa. Painting has become a kind of alchemy: a way to transform emotion into form. I’ve spent years romanticising pain, and yet, that same pain has given me a heightened ability to recognise and translate emotional states into visual language. The materials speak in their own language – of saturation, resistance, stillness, and release. Texture and gesture become ways of accessing what is felt but unspoken.

Over time, my process has become less about control and more about surrender. There is a quiet trust now, a recognition that the more I let go, the more the work can move through me. I use paint as both surface and substance – pouring, layering, sculpting, allowing it to carry weight, fragility, and rhythm. I sometimes feel like a gateway – open, attuned,r esponsive. My role is not to dictate what a painting should become, but to allow it to become what it needs to.