Howard Hersh is a third generation artist who has maintained a professional studio practice for 40 years.  Hersh has worked in a variety of mediums; drawing, printmaking, installation, painting in encaustic, oil, and acrylic, and lately, woodwork that have transformed the paintings into wall sculpture.

With over 70 solo exhibitions and 250 group shows, his works are in museum collections across the country, including Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Texas, Tucson Museum of Art, Bernard Zuckerman Museum of Art, Atlanta, Ga, and others.  During his early years in the studio, Hersh was very influenced by Asian aesthetics and printmaking practices, leading to many commissions in Japan, Indonesia, and China.  Hersh began his career in Santa Fe in 1984, then relocated back to his native California in 1998.  Currently living in San Francisco, he has had a studio at the Hunters Point Shipyard for seventeen years.

In 2024, Hersh will have a mid-career retrospective at Cal State Stanislaus.

ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is acrylic paint on shaped birch panels, a hybrid of painting and sculpture.  To achieve this, the paintings are supported by an exposed framework, making them  three dimensional.  Lately, I’ve been rendering the paintings in an illusionistic manner to further the appearance of dimensionality.

I work this way in order to support my belief in “no separation”.  In the case of my artwork, painting and sculpture are connected and interrelated.  This is similar to the Gaia principle, where organisms and their inorganic surroundings are closely integrated to form a single, self-regulating system. 

To further illustrate my belief in oneness, I utilize structure as imagery in my paintings and my sculptures; while being used as a noun and a verb, structure is found in everything imaginable, seen and unseen.