Contributor

Bruce Herman

Bruce Herman is an American painter and educator (b. 1953) who lives with his wife Meg and extended family in Gloucester, Massachusetts––where he has his art studio. Herman’s paintings, prints, and drawings have been exhibited in more than 150 shows––in Washington, New York, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles––and internationally in Italy, England, Japan, Hong Kong, Canada, and Israel. His work is featured in many public and private art collections, including the Vatican Museum of Modern Religious Art in Rome; The Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts print collection; The Grunewald Print Collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; DeCordova Museum in Boston; the Cape Ann Museum; and in many colleges and universities throughout the United States and Canada.

Professor Herman taught and curated exhibitions at Gordon College from 1984 to 2023 and was the founding chair of the Art Department (begun 1988). He held the Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts––Gordon’s first endowed faculty appointment.

Herman completed both BFA and MFA degrees at Boston University College of Fine Arts under American artists Philip Guston, James Weeks, David Aronson, Reed Kay, and Arthur Polonsky. Herman’s art has been published widely in books and journals. His book Makers by Nature with IVP Academic Press is to be released in January 2025.

Broken Beauty Revisited

An interview with Bruce Herman.

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Bruce Herman Oct 29, 2010

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Debt to the Dead

I’ve never had the sense that I could claim a sort of exclusive authorship in my work as painter. We are all products of our time, of influences that shape our understandings and our creativity.

Bruce Herman Sep 1, 2010 Making the most of college (fifth annual)

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“Ut pictura poesis”?

There was a prolonged period recently when the words “traditional” and “craftsy” were the kiss of death for an artist’s career. One result is that in the past several decades, artists of every discipline have been trained with the primary expectation that they shall produce new and sometimes shocking objects; choreograph daring dance movements; compose provocative musical pieces or poems—and in many cases, skill has been moved to the margins or completely off-stage. But in recent decades the centrality of novelty and the demand for an art centred primarily on ideas and issues has lessened a bit—a pendulum swing away from experimentalism.

Bruce Herman May 21, 2010

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Witness

This is one piece from Herman's touring exhibit, Presence/Absence, concerning themes of a sense of place, "geologic time," and the environment and creation care. Several stops on the tour are collaborative with local land trusts and other charitable organizations, to...

Bruce Herman Jan 11, 2008

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Called

From the series Woman, a cycle of paintings about the stages of life for a woman—and a metaphoric evocation of the body/Bride of Christ.