USING A PLAIN, MONOCHROMATIC PALETTE, THE NEW YORK-BASED ARTIST CONJURES UP SOME AUSTERE, ATMOSPHERIC IMAGES

Published on October 22, 2025

by Edward M. Gómez, with Steven Hirsch

Steven Hirsch (Instagram: @stevenhirsch), a photographer for one of New York’s well-known tabloids of the crooks and con men who routinely pass through the criminal courts of downtown Manhattan — that’s his usual beat — is also a prolific painter and one of brutjournal’s regular contributing artists. It was only a few years ago that he first took up a brush and began experimenting with paint on paper and, later, occasionally, on canvas.

Exploring color with gusto, he has produced many pictures featuring bold, bracing palettes, the exuberance of which often perfectly suits the subjects he chooses for his paintings. Frequently inspired by the scandal-loving headlines of the tabloid-newspaper genre he knows so well — corporate miscreants, corrupt politicians, rich women with too much plastic surgery who get mixed up in tawdry capers — his art finds delectable raw material in the Zeitgeist’s more extreme impulses.