Claire Godbee - Transfigurations

December, 2025

With her solo exhibition “Transfigurations”, painter Claire Godbee traced the dual nature of grief, representing it as a cyclical process, where destruction and regeneration coexist. Through fire, forests, and snake symbolism, this series reimagines death not as an ending, but as a transformative cycle of shedding, emergence and renewal. 

After a long and prolific career as an artist in Alabama, Claire entered a transformative cycle of her own shortly after “Transfigurations”, enrolling in the MFA program at New York University. She currently lives and paints in Brooklyn, NY. The Old Bailey Gallery is honored to have hosted one of her final exhibitions as a Birmingham-based artist.