Watercolor is Firkins' medium of choice currently. He first used it in the mid 90s, following the abstract, drawing-like style of Cezanne to do landscapes and cityscapes. Picking up his sable brushes again in mid-2003, Firkins spent nearly two years painting in precisely the same spot every day, looking west across a body of water to fathom the sun. These works grew into the show "Solar Constant." Though painted in a single location, their variety attests to
nature’s first love—the constancy of change.

Firkins spent the next year and a half working on the light of city night. After nine months of frequenting the same streets and intersections, he realized he had learned or invented a language that captures the improvisational nature of night trafficking in manmade light. In a style unmistakably his own, Firkins creates watercolors he feels have an affinity with jazz, the art form that comes closest for him to expressing the relativity of things. The night paintings became the show "Completing the General Theory of Relativity."