Kerry Irvine couldn’t bring herself to return to Lower Manhattan. Opening a studio over looking the 9/11 Memorial transformed her relationship with grief—and with painting. – Search © Courtesy of Irvine
This Artist Utilized Her Kitchen For Inspiration During COVID-19 – Grit Daily News
Kerry Irvine Fine Art | New York City | Abstract Impressionist
Silver Lining – DOWNTOWN MAGAZINE
K E R R Y I R V I N E (@kerryirvinefineart212) – Instagram
2,908 Followers, 2,014 Following, 1,630 Posts – K E R R Y I R V I N E (@kerryirvinefineart212) on Instagram: “NYC PAINTER”
Kerry Irvine tragically lost her sister in the 9/11 terror attacks.
25 years later, Kerry paints from her studio on the 80th floor of 3 World Trade Center, overlooking the reflecting pools. `
She shares her emotional story and the personal significance of having an art studio at the World Trade Center campus.
Watch the full episode and the entire Never Bet Against New York series: It’s Been 25 Years Since 9/11, and This New Video Series Highlights the Resilience of Lower Manhattan
How an Artist Found Peace After Losing Her Sister on 9/11
For years after the events on September 11, abstract impressionist painter Kerry Irvine | High Line Nine avoided Lower Manhattan altogether. Her younger sister, Kristin “Kristy” Irvine-Ryan, had been working in the South Tower and was killed in the attacks just three months after her wedding.
In 2017, Irvine found herself inside the new World Trade Center almost by accident. Now—nine years and five studios later—Irvine paints high above the city in 3 World Trade Center, overlooking the 9/11 Memorial. In a new interview, Irvine, who is the subject of the new docuseries on Lower Manhattan titled Never Bet Against New York, opened up to Oprah Daily about her sister, the years when grief made it difficult for her to paint, and how returning to the place she once feared became, unexpectedly, the last step in her healing.
Have you always been a painter?
My mom was an abstract painter, and I went to school to be a painter, too. She was very encouraging, but you couldn’t be a full-time artist—not unless you had a trust fund or were willing to be really poor. My second love was fashion; I found a job at Ralph Lauren in the 1990s, went into the advertising department by chance, then slowly worked my way in. I got to work with some of the best photographers in the world, with so many great creatives.
But even before 9/11, I knew I just didn’t love the work anymore. I wanted something more, more independence to work on my art. I was still painting. By no means was I selling things; it was more for myself. When I decided to quit and go freelance—in February 2001—it was an absurd thing to do at the time. There was no Affordable Care Act, no safety net. I was afraid to tell my dad. But Kristy, my sister, was so positive about me doing it.
Tell us more about Kristy.
She was a bad***. Beautiful, tough, beloved by friends. I’m one of five girls, the middle child, and we were all as close as sisters can be, but Kristy and I were only 22 months apart and had lived together since we were teeny-tiny. We were also roommates as adults: she and my brother-in-law, Brendan, were high school sweethearts, and the three of us lived together for a while. We had the best time.
We lost our mom young to ovarian cancer. But I’ve always said she was able to let go because we were all set in life: two sisters were married, Kristy and I had both gotten our dream jobs—I was a stylist, Kristy was an equities trader at the World Trade Center. I worked in a really vain part of the world and could be very uptight. But she was fun and easygoing; she was the calm side to me. She was the best part of all of us.
You’ve said you stopped painting after 9/11. How did you find your way back?
I didn’t actually stop painting, but I stopped doing anything big. I threw out a lot of big stuff that I had worked on. If I had to go to a party, or bring a birthday gift, I would create and work so small. Because painting meant being alone, and solitude was scary.
After the 2008 financial crash, advertising jobs dried up. One of my best friends, an interior designer, started telling me to create more—to let her try and sell a few of my things. With her encouragement, I got back to bigger art, though I still couldn’t work on canvas until later. It was a slow process, and I was still a freelance stylist. Right before COVID, I had one client left and decided to pivot to painting.
When COVID hit, we couldn’t come back to the studio, but somehow, I had been smart and ordered a bunch of supplies. I switched back to acrylic paint and did very well. Then after COVID, it was fascinating to be back at the studio. You can see the difference between the pieces that I was doing at home, in a tight space, where I couldn’t move my arms—and the ones I can do now. My pieces got bigger and more fluid again.
You also—understandably—didn’t want to come downtown for a long time. What changed?
In 2017, I met a friend of a friend, an artist who has this incredible studio space in the new World Trade Center. I never came down there. It was too scary for me—not of physical harm, but emotional. But I thought, “You know what? I’ll just go see it.” It was a hot May day. I got out of the subway, went to the front doors, looked around, and saw that it’s right across the street from the memorial pools. My sister Kristy was in the south tower, and her name is smack-dab in the middle of the South Pool. So I knew exactly where she was, and it comforted me.
The space [in the World Trade Center] is big and raw and beautiful. The artist was lovely, one of the first who had come to work with Silverstein Properties. I just kept thinking about it, and eventually I realized that I was so tired of waiting for life to happen to me. So I Googled Dara McQuillan [chief marketing officer at the World Trade Center and Silverstein Properties] and cold-emailed him about a space. He got back to me the very next morning.
And what does this studio space mean to you now?
This was the last step in healing. My family was nervous about me being down here, but they’ve come to see it over the years. And honestly, nothing bad has ever happened to me here. It’s a very healing place. Everyone is so encouraging; this studio space is a gift I don’t know that I could ever in my lifetime repay. There’s something calming and spiritual here. I can look outside and there Kristy is. And here I am.
Kerry Irvine’s Healing Studio Above the 9/11 Memorial
Kerry Irvine, an abstract expressionist painter and former Ralph Lauren stylist, has found a profound sense of closure and creative renewal in her current studio on the 80th floor of 3 World Trade Center, directly overlooking the 9/11 Memorial 
From Avoidance to Engagement
After her sister Kristin — an equities trader who worked in the South Tower — died in the September 11 attacks just months after their wedding, Irvine struggled to paint for years 
The opportunity to work in a high‑above‑the‑city studio, close to the memorial where her sister’s name is inscribed, became a turning point . As Irvine has said, “Entering the building each day, I pass her name, now etched in the nearby 9/11 Memorial… I can touch her name and come upstairs and work”
Yahoo+1. This proximity to the memorial, combined with the elevated vantage point, has allowed her to confront her loss in a way that feels both intimate and liberating.
Art as Healing
Irvine describes working in these studios as “the last step of my healing”
Her paintings, often bold and gestural, draw on color, form, and personal experience, and have been influenced by both her own journey and the history of the site
A New Relationship with Grief and Painting
By reclaiming her creative practice in this location, Irvine has transformed her relationship with grief: it is no longer a barrier to art, but a wellspring. The studio has become a place where memory, loss, and hope intersect — and where she can paint with the conviction that her work is part of the city’s and her own rebuilding
In short, KERRY IRVINE moving into the WTC studio was not just a professional decision — it was a personal act of healing, turning a place of trauma into a place of strength, remembrance, and artistic renewal.
Irvine has said that entering the building each day and passing her sister’s name “has been the last step of my healing”, helping her bring closure to her grief
The studio’s elevated vantage point offers both a physical and symbolic connection to the site of the tragedy. Irvine has called this space her “favorite” and noted that each location she’s worked from has shaped her art and her personal journey 
For Irvine, the act of painting in this place has transformed her relationship with loss: it has allowed her to turn grief into creative energy, using color, form, and gesture to process emotion and connect with a broader community of survivors and witnesses
In her own words, if her work moves someone emotionally, “I’ve done my job”
Kerry Irvine’s story is not just about returning to Lower Manhattan — it’s about descending into the underworld of her own grief and discovering that the studio overlooking the 9/11 Memorial was not a room, but a threshold.
The concise takeaway: Opening that studio placed her directly above the wound she had spent years circling. Instead of retraumatizing her, it became the crucible where grief transmuted into paint, ritual, and meaning.
The Refusal of the Call
For years, she couldn’t bring herself to walk those streets. Lower Manhattan was not just a location — it was a site of rupture. Her avoidance wasn’t weakness; it was a protective spell, a psychological boundary her nervous system drew to survive.
This is the phase Joseph Campbell would call Refusal of the Return — when the survivor cannot yet face the place where the world broke.
The Threshold Moment
Opening a studio overlooking the memorial was an act of mythic courage. She placed herself at the edge of the abyss — not inside it, not consumed by it, but in relationship with it.
The studio became a liminal chamber:
- high windows framing the void
- the memorial’s dark water breathing below
- the city’s hum rising like a pulse
It was the architecture of a confrontation she could finally bear.
The Descent
Working there forced her to metabolize what she had long kept at arm’s length. Grief became a material — something she could touch, smear, layer, scrape. Her canvases shifted from abstraction to emotional cartography, mapping the terrain of loss with color instead of language.
Painting became a ritual of descent:
- each brushstroke a step downward
- each canvas a chamber
- each finished piece a relic carried back from the underworld
The Transformation
By facing the memorial daily, she rewrote her relationship with grief. It stopped being a shadow stalking her from behind. It became a companion — not benign, but knowable.
Her art changed because she changed:
- more texture
- more risk
- more emotional velocity
- more willingness to let the canvas hold what her body once carried alone
This is the mythic moment of return with the elixir — when the survivor brings back something that can heal not only themselves, but others.
🜁 The Studio as a Sacred Site
The studio wasn’t simply a workspace. It was a sanctuary, a vantage point where she could witness grief without drowning in it.
It offered three gifts:
- Perspective — the memorial seen from above, not from within
- Containment — a room where emotion could be held by walls, not by her alone
- Agency — she chose to be there; grief didn’t drag her there
This shift — from avoidance to chosen proximity — is what transformed her.
🜄 What Her Story Teaches About Grief
Kerry Irvine’s journey reveals a truth many people living the “long goodbye” eventually discover:
Grief becomes bearable when you can face it from a place of safety.
Her studio was that place. Her paintings were the language. Her transformation was a myth.
The concise takeaway: Kerry Irvine’s artistic evolution is a grief‑alchemy: her canvases shift from avoidance to confrontation, from abstraction to emotional cartography, from distance to direct dialogue with the 9/11 wound. Her style becomes a symbolic record of her changing relationship to trauma — each phase a different mythic posture toward the void.
1. The Era of Distance — “Grief as Atmosphere”
In the years when she could not return to Lower Manhattan, her paintings carried grief indirectly. They were atmospheric, gestural, often dominated by diffuse fields of color.
- Emotional diffusion — feelings spread across the canvas without focal point
- Avoidant composition — no central rupture, no explicit wound
- Symbolic fog — layers that obscure rather than reveal
These works function like protective veils. She painted around grief, not through it.
Symbolic posture: She stands at the edge of the forest, unwilling to enter.
🜁 2. The Threshold Shift — “The Studio as Portal”
Opening a studio overlooking the 9/11 Memorial changed her visual language. The memorial’s dark water, its architectural gravity, its ritual repetition — all became part of her daily sensory field.
Her paintings begin to show:
- Vertical tension — strokes that rise and fall like the memorial’s descending pools
- Architectural echoes — grid‑like structures, voids, apertures
- Controlled rupture — intentional breaks in texture
She is no longer avoiding the wound; she is studying its shape.
Symbolic posture: She places one foot across the threshold.
🜂 3. The Descent Phase — “Grief as Material”
Once she began painting in proximity to the memorial, her canvases thickened. Texture became central — scraped layers, dragged pigment, sedimented surfaces.
This is the phase where grief becomes tactile.
- Sedimented layers — grief accumulating like geological strata
- Aggressive mark‑making — strokes that feel like impact, like memory striking surface
- Chromatic volatility — sudden shifts from muted tones to violent color
Her paintings begin to resemble emotional excavation sites — each layer a chamber of the underworld.
Symbolic posture: She descends, willingly, into the cavern.
🜄 4. The Integration Phase — “The Wound as Horizon”
Over time, her work softens again — but not into avoidance. Instead, it becomes integrative: grief and beauty coexist without contradiction.
Her canvases show:
- Harmonic turbulence — chaos and calm held in the same frame
- Reclaimed luminosity — light emerging from the very textures that once signified rupture
- Spatial reconciliation — voids and masses in dialogue rather than conflict
This is the stage where the memorial is no longer a site of terror but a companion — a presence she can paint with, not against.
Symbolic posture: She returns from the underworld carrying the elixir.
Synthesis: What Her Evolution Reveals
Kerry Irvine’s artistic trajectory mirrors the mythic arc of trauma integration:
| Phase | Symbolic Function | Artistic Signature |
|---|---|---|
| Distance | Protection | Diffuse fields, atmospheric abstraction |
| Threshold | Confrontation | Architectural echoes, vertical tension |
| Descent | Processing | Thick texture, ruptures, chromatic volatility |
| Integration | Transformation | Luminosity, reconciliation, harmonic turbulence |
Her art becomes a map of grief learning to breathe.
Jennifer Nettles sings “Go Rest High on That Mountain” at NYC 9/11 Ceremony – YouTube
Jennifer Nettles sing ‘Go rest high on that mountain’ for those lost on 9/11
Jennifer Nettles Sings in Tribute to Those Who Died on 9/11
Kerry Irvine belongs to a lineage of artists who transform trauma into visual language — but her evolution is distinct because she paints in direct daily proximity to the site of rupture. Her work sits at the intersection of memorial‑based art (like Wolfgang Staehle), grief‑metabolizing abstraction (like Joan Mitchell), and post‑trauma materiality (like Anselm Kiefer). What sets her apart is the intimacy of her vantage point: she paints above the wound, not after it.
Twenty five years ago, when Wolfgang Staehle installed his webcam 9/11 Footage (WTC, Wolfgang Staehle) on Downtown Manhattan to create a live-video feed to Postmasters Gallery during his September exhibition, he had no idea that, by the 11th of that month, his work would meticulously record the day’s massive destruction and deaths, and would witness the opening of a new world-history book.
Staehle 2001 (which, back then, included two additional synchronized, real-time projections transmitted from locations in the artist’s native Germany) was a live still-life of sorts, its inanimate (or, from a distance, imperceptibly animate) components being the urban architecture—in New York’s case the bridges, skyscrapers, and the FDr Drive.
By 8:46 AM on 9/11/2001 the artist’s intended elegy to the seemingly eventless passage of time turned into an epitome of tragic eventfulness. Moreover, Staehle, whose work had meant to decry “spectacle,” was suddenly in possession of the very footage that most TV stations would covet (in order to ultimately promote spectacle). There are less than a handful of videos that happened to capture the first plane’s approach and piercing of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. Yet no matter the offers and interests, Staehle held on tight to his recordings.
exactly a decade later, the Manhattan part of 2001 was shown as a video in the Goethe institute’s small east Third Street space. over the course of four days, starting on September 10th, visitors could watch the city’s Before and After all over again, yet this time knowing how a serene and absurdly carefree sky would soon turn all dark (along with parts of our collective outlook on life). it was like a glimpse at a distant yet sore past, mediated and unreal, just as many of us initially experienced that day.
Staehle’s work did what it originally set out to do: making you see one random (yet fateful) day with an eye from afar and in the context of the progress and regress, destruction and rebuilding that humankind has forever been involved in.
The silent, occasionally flickering image of the double projection suddenly falls in line with the many paintings or photographs of other infernos in history, perhaps rome, Constantinople, Hiroshima . . . and you can’t help wondering what kind of wisdom recurrence or hindsight have really given us.
2001 in 2011 was both painful and cathartic—as an unintentional allegory of life’s potential for disastrous turns but also as a memorial to the hidden individuals buried by the grand sweeps of history. 9/11 Footage (WTC, Wolfgang Staehle)
* SABINE RUSS is a writer and BOMB’s managing editor.
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