Roger Herman
Over 20 years of woodcut monoprinting allowed for a freedom of expression and spontaneity seldom seen in such a simple printing.

Roger Herman
Woodcut Monoprints
Roger Herman has been one of LA's well-kept secrets. Though long admired as professor in the painting and drawing department of UCLA, he has not exhibited his own paintings in LA. since a survey of his early figurative work in 2009. In part, this was due to his lively and successful foray into ceramics, making clay pots with expressionist panache and erotic surface decoration. They were shown two years ago at Richard Telles Gallery and well-received. He also was known for monumental woodblock prints. But what about the paintings? After all, it was painting that brought him LACMA's Young Talent Award in 1983. Born and raised in post-war Germany, with a graduate degree from the art academy of Karlsruhe, Herman came to Northern California on a DAAD grant given by the German government in part because of his interest in the expressionist painting done by the Bay Area figurative painters in the 1950's and 60's. Herman's own early paintings owed a small debt to that work as well as the considerable heritage of German Expressionist art.