“Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings”
August Lamm
Delaney’s Pub Side Gallery
883 Whalley Ave.
New Haven
June 24, 2026
Back in the mid-2010s, I was one of hundreds of thousands of followers of New Haven-based illustrator August Lamm’s Instagram. I was so busy amassing my online gauntlet of art inspiration that I didn’t even notice her quietly deactivating her account. Until this Wednesday night.
For one night only, Lamm, an artist, writer, and musician, held an exhibit of her drawings and paintings at Delaney’s Pub Side Gallery.
Lamm, a one-time online sensation, has moved fully offline and expanded her palette, with a story to tell.
Thursday night’s exhibit featured oil paintings, most of which were portraits, with a few landscapes and still-lifes. The exhibit also included drawings that were more in the style of her signature pen and ink that brought so much attention online (and resulted in an instructional book).
I was familiar with the juxtaposition of the illustration style; the newer paintings felt symbolic. I idolized those pen and ink drawings as a teenager. But those illustrations were a smaller part of the exhibit, because Lamm’s art had evolved. I guess my tastes had, too.
She recalled that period of social media fame, saying, “My role is to say, ‘I did that,’ and it was horribly unfulfilling and damaging to my career.” It was a sobering realization to even hear, because I remembered how much I used to long for this kind of online adoration.
Lamm had shifted from illustration to more painting because it became “more difficult to work in a more delicate, technical medium at a small scale.” She also noted creative limitations. “It can be hard to capture how alive someone is with pen and ink.”
Her painting of her father in the hospital is particularly moving and heavy. With one look, his exhaustion is felt. His hands are as large as his head, with one near his belly, the other meant to flip the page.
Lamm is fascinated with faces and hands. “You can express confidence, fatigue, anything, with your hands,” she said.
Although oil paint is applied thickly everywhere else, it is selectively thinner and streaky on her father’s forearm in front. I thought about that hand again. I’d like to think he was tucking himself in with what strength he had left.
The painting is overall muted and more neutral in color, especially the dressings, but his face and hands let some vibrancy and more dimension in. He is clothed in those more-sterile neutrals, but he himself is more life and light.
When I asked about her painting process, Lamm explained, “I don’t go into any painting with an idea of what I want to communicate. My soul does end up in the work, but unintentionally.”
She has different relationships with each of her artistic mediums. Writing is the most emotional; painting is pure craft; and making music is both craft and emotional. She can paint all day because it is meditative, but writing for two hours can be exhausting.
I found our conversation and her work quietly inspiring, maybe partly because I was reeling from this reunification of my teenage and adult selves. Lamm was also kind enough to encourage me to exercise my free will: to be brave enough to use it to dispel the bad, and instead go toward the good in my life.
Of course, one such bad thing for me is a smartphone. It was uncomfortable to reckon with the fact that despite being a fan of Lamm’s work, I had completely lost her to the ether of social media.
Since deactivating her Instagram account, Lamm has gone through a years-long process of divorcing her smartphone. She has written an upcoming technocritical manifesto, “You Don’t Need a Smartphone.” Her book tour starts in September and includes nearby stops at Strand and Greenlight Bookstores in New York City.
