SELECTED REVIEWS

"Raw, unpolished, yet complete, Herman's paintings are all the more potent for compelling us to fill in the void"; "...charged elemental forces" ..."(the paintings) suggest a preverbal, subconscious state."

"Herman is a painter immersed in the nature of materials....a mix of viscous acrylic and enamel paint, bronzing powders and collaged found objects... These suggest a preverbal, subconscious state...charged elemental forces collapsing in on themselves."
(Nancy Stapen, Boston Globe)

"George Herman's black and white paintings of lone, larger than lifesize female figures have the mute, looming presence of George Segal's sculptures, the gestural strength of Franz Kline's monochromatic abstractions, and the brute, animal naturalness of Degas' bathing women. Massive, anonymous, unpretty, they are caught in acts of strain or repose, hauling on ropes, or slumping in chairs.... Raw, unpolished, yet complete, Herman's paintings are all the more potent for compelling us to fill in the void."
(Phyllis Koenig, Art New England)

"George Herman fits into the broad neo-expressionist category, but on his own terms. His paint application is jagged and turbulent, yet the work never loses a sense of cool control."
(Christine Temin, Boston Globe)

"... in the investigation of nature... George Herman's touch can be very light... But darkness beckons Herman. (The monotypes) are about the vagaries of structure. These are akin to the predecessors of color-field painting, such as Gustav Klimt...Heavy ink charges Herman's monotypes...."
(Edward Strickland, Art New England)

"There is no courting period, no preliminary wooing when fire embraces oil paints, turpentine, and wood. There is a flash of uncontrolled passion followed by smoldering ruin. The call came around midnight on April 9, 1999. Kendall Center for the Arts was burning. It took George Herman...minutes to reach the place where he had been painting for seventeen years. He arrived in time to watch the... flames move inexorably toward his corner studio on the top floor..."
(Beth Surdut, The Middlesex Beat)

(Herman's paintings are)...moody, color saturated...tactile and creamy...Applied to a wall-sized piece of wood, the colors have ben scraped down to the wood in some places, overlaying each other in others. There are no rules and...Herman's work is free of constraints."
(Beth Surdut, The Middlesex Beat)

“The unlikely mix of of paints create alchemic results, which Herman is unable to predict completely. Herman’s method evokes work by…Sigmar Polke. His sense of light and meteorological subtlety…recalls William H. Turner. Yet Herman’s paintings are fresh rather than derivative. In fact, his lovingly slathered paint concoctions—at once tactile and immediate, cosmic and infinite—are…standouts.”
(Rachel Strutt, artsMEDIA)

ArtsMedia, June, 2006
The Boston Globe, May 28, 2006
ArtsMedia, April, 2004
The Middlesex Beat, December, 2000
Art New England, February, 1993
The Boston Globe, October 22, 1992
The Boston Globe, November 29, 1990
The Boston Globe, December 18, 1986
The Boston Globe, November 14, 1985
The Boston Herald, July 18, 1985
Art New England, June, 1985

 



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