Paul Herman

Because I have always travelled, I get asked a lot about where I’m from, & for the same reason, the answer has become more complicated the older I get. I was born in L.A. but left there when I was just two years old. Before I started school at six, we had lived in a few countries from Morocco & Malta to Sicily & Italy. Not because my dad was a military man, but because he was a painter. A crazy one, I guess! It seems I was unable to stop the momentum once I was old enough to decide for myself & have travelled ever since. I have lived in places from Thailand & India to the range of Europe’s latitude, from Scotland to the south of Spain as well as the two coasts of the U.S.

I have recently finished my doctoral dissertation & hope to defend it this year. The years I have spent researching & writing it have been a period of deep learning despite the long experience as a painter I have behind me. My thesis is about Rembrandt’s materials & techniques. People have been trying to figure out Rembrandt’s sorcery (as van Gogh called it) for 400 years. Sir Joshua Reynolds, for example (it was discovered in 2014), bought paintings by Rembrandt & subjected them to scrapings & dissolving solutions to try to figure out their secrets! But it has n...

BFA Robert Gordon University
Aberdeen, Scotland

MFA University of Seville
Seville, Spain

Doctoral Candidate
University of Seville
Seville, Spain