B. 1980

Lives and works between Los Angeles and Santa Fe

Silverstein's artworks are built on the belief that meaning is assembled from fragments of experience placed in relation to one another. She layers puddles of translucent paint, cuts large-scale paintings into see-through tassels, pins fragments of painted canvas onto wooden armatures, and collages pieces of one work onto another in a highly physical practice aimed at creating moments of contact and collision that mimic the way experience and perception are layered in consciousness.

She studied Fine Art and Comparative Religion at Columbia University and later attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where she began taking on portrait commissions — a practice that continues to this day. In New York she formed a close friendship with painter Chuck Close, whose use of the grid to dissolve the hierarchy between figure and ground became a lasting influence. She was an inaugural advisor to the Outset Contemporary Art Fund, selecting works from Frieze for donation to Tate Modern. In 2009 she began a decade-long project which began on a beach in Iceland and culminated in her first institutional solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson.

The pandemic collided with the construction of a new studio in Los Angeles and her father falling ill; she spent those years quietly painting Bows in moments when she could — a body of work that has become an ongoing practice more than a finite series. Silverstein continues to expand her practice between studios in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, placing work in significant collections including DeWoody, Aspen, Zabludowicz, and Burger collections. She is self-represented.