Andrea Schwartz Gallery/Howard Hersh Review

Andrea Schwartz Gallery
Howard Hersh Review

by Gail Steinberg
The Steinberg Farmer Report
January 2007

Howard Hersh is a big name among encaustic painters. With umpteen solo shows and over 100 group shows to his credit, he has become a superstar at pouring the smoothest of smooth surfaces and for his trademark way of joining multiple panels into evocative shapes, unique among painters who work with beeswax.

I’ll tell you what does me in—the level of precision and detail he’s perfected. Taking full advantage of the translucent qualities inherent to wax, building flawless layer over layer, his blend of architectural grids and organic marks combine and appear to grow outwards, beyond the panels borders. Its easy to imagine that the finished pieces could just keep growing, like any living creatures, soon taking over the walls of the gallery, stopping traffic on 2nd street, growing upward like Jack’s beanstalk, or continuing in a morphic flow, perhaps to the Pacific. You’ve got to see it.