BURTON SILVERMAN
BORN
1928, Booklyn, New York
EDUCATION
B.A. Columbia University
Hon. Doctorate, Academy of Arts College, S.F.
AFFILIATIONS
National Academy of Design
Membership Committee American Watercolor Society
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
The Brigham Young Art Museum
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware
Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D.C.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Museums, Washington, D.C.
New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT
Parrish Museum of Art, Southampton, NY
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
American Artist
N.Y. Times
American Arts Quarterly
Artist Magazine
International Artist
Art News
Art Talk
Sight and Insight, The Art of Burton Silverman, Madison Square Press, NY
REPRESENTED BY
Henoch Gallery, New York City
Total Arts Gallery, Taos, NM
Jazz Trombone
Burt Silverman
20" x 16" Oil on Panel
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
"During the years in which I worked as an illustrator for Time and the New Yorker, among many others, .I became a fairly proficient portrait painter as a result of the intensive training I had in doing the small portrait drawings that accompanied the "Profiles" feature of the New Yorker. I had drawn over 125 portraits in the course of 25 years with the magazine and rarely encountered a person who I felt constrained to paint. One of the few exceptions was the former Episcopal Bishop of New York, Paul Moore whose portrait I went on to paint for his retirement from the Bishopric. So it was with some surprise that one of the last of these drawings was of a well-known Jazz trombonist whose demeanor and quiet modesty struck me well after the assignment had finished. I used the drawing I had done to make this painting of him as someone who seemed to be totally wedded to his art and, clutching his trombone close to his chest, seemed to intuitively understand that his artistry should be the real subject of the portrait. For me he epitomized the real artist, unspectacular in his personal demeanor but riveting in his craft. Who he is seems almost unimportant; what he is, the far more lasting."
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