“My morning breakfast ritual is to read The NY Times and The Guardian for any reassuring news that our democracy is still breathing. And then last week, photos of the ongoing horror in Gaza erupted with photos of starved, emaciated kids, and it exploded in my brain. All of the UN agencies, international aid agencies, and advocacy groups like Doctors Without Borders had been beseeching the world to stop a genocide that had been unfolding for months. The photos were too much. I had to unload the anguish at viewing this summary image of all the genocides in the past sordid, brutal history of the inhumanity of our species. I needed to shout "Stop!" Since Auschwitz, we said "never again". Now we Jews were doing what? Getting even? This little image will not change anything. In doing the painting, it can give my rage the best way to shout: "never again."(Burton Silverman©).
Burton Silverman©Burton Silverman been painting and exhibiting as a fine artist for over 75 years. His early training was at age 11 in the kid’s classes at the Art Students’ League in NY. Years later he would become a teacher at the League and at the National Academy of Design. and a guest instructor ay art colleges all across the nation. He attended Columbia University where he majored in Art History and graduated in 1949 and 2 years later he was drafted into the US Army during the Korean War. After discharge from the service, his career as a painter evolved slowly but steadily as his gallery representation expanded both in NY and in Philadelphia and Washington DC. Like early American painters Winslow Homer, the Ashcan artists and Edward Hopper, his manifest graphic and painting skills drew him to an extraordinary parallel career in illustration. His work appeared in national magazines and print media with covers on Time. Newsweek and New York. as well as the 25 years of portraits for the New Yorker’s celebrated feature, Profiles. This led to election to the vaunted Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame Other honors. and awards and multiple Museum retrospectives followed culminating in a celebrated retrospective in 2023 at the historic Salmagundi Gallery and Museum in New York At 97 he continues to paint in his studio, with both large-format pictures and intimate, smaller glimpses of the little-noticed moments of our lives.