Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce the New York solo debut of Carole Freeman. A painter of people and narrative pictures, Freeman’s topical exhibition, Unsung, will feature twenty-four intimately proportioned oil-on-linen portraits of little known and fairly unrecognized American heroes. Imbued with a compelling and vivid immediacy, Freeman’s luminous paintings affirm the quiet potency of the portrait genre. Powerful in concept and execution, Unsung stages an implied yet meaningful meditation on the present US political climate.

Utilizing thorough research and a painterly hand, Freeman delves into and takes-on issues ripped from today’s headlines, depicting the champions and the controversial; courageous and inspiring community-minded people who bring awareness to heartbreaking and heartening stories relevant to our time. These societal contributors represent a range of social and political issues: sexual harassment; fake and post-truth news; racism; the environment; civil, LGBTQ, and women’s rights; terrorism, Islamophobia, and others.

Subjects are as varied as a physician, intellectuals, a mother, pilots, a miner, a sex educator, and two Republican politicians who show the possibilities for non-partisan actions in support of the governed, the country, and the constitution: William Moore McCulloch who presented civil rights legislation to Congress months before John F. Kennedy, though considered political suicide; Edward Brooke, one of the first Republicans to call on President Nixon to resign in light of the Watergate scandal; also the great uncle of Emmett Till, Mose Wright, who in 1955, testified in an environment sweltering with Mississippi racism under threats against his life, at the trial of the men who brutally abducted, tortured, and murdered his 14-year old African-American great-nephew for allegedly whistling at a white woman; and Lois Jenson, a Minnesota miner who, in 1988, filed Lois E. Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. and won the first class-action sexual harassment lawsuit in the United States.

Also represented are four New Yorkers: Jane Jacobs – journalist, author, and activist who stopped the Robert Moses Lower Manhattan Expressway; Amy Goodman – investigative journalist, host and producer of Democracy Now considered a “guardian of truth” (Rolling Stone magazine); Muhammed Salman Hamdani – Muslim NYC Police Department cadet killed while helping during the aftermath of 9/11 yet falsely investigated for possible involvement with the perpetrators; and Sylvia Rae Rivera - transgender activist and self-proclaimed drag queen who was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activists Alliance, and START (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries).

Carole Freeman (American / Canadian, b. 1954) is a Contemporary Figurative painter known for her narrative pictures and portraits. Freeman grew up in Winnipeg, Canada and attended the Royal College of Art in London, UK (M.A., Painting).

Recent solo exhibitions include Portraits of Facebook, 196 portraits of international art and cultural figures, Something About Winnipeg , and three exhibitions of celebrity portraits featured during the Toronto International Film Festival. Freeman has received international recognition through Los Angeles group exhibitions with David Hockney, Elizabeth Peyton, Frank Auerbach, Picasso, Matisse, Lautrec, and Klimt, and the shortlist exhibitions for Young Masters Art Prize 2017 in London, UK. Freeman was invited to present her work on the panel Making Art in the Age of New Media at the bi-yearly Canadian Arts Summit in Banff, Canada.

Freeman has been commissioned by New York art critics Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, Los Angeles art dealer Leslie Sacks, and Lord and Lady Glentoran, Dublin, Ireland. Her work has been featured in The Globe and Mail, The National Post , Winnipeg Free Press, and Studio Visit , ArtDaily Newsletter , ArtSlant , Berkshire News, Los Angeles Magazine , and Visual Art Source . Freeman is represented in galleries in Canada, the US, and the UK where her work can be found in private, corporate, and public collections as well as in Italy and Australia. She currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.