Roger Herman California Poppies

Herman was born in Germany but has lived in Los Angeles since 1977. From oil paintings to ceramic vessels and tables, the artist's artworks are defined by an unpredictable expressiveness that celebrates imperfection, spontaneity, and intuition. A professor at UCLA, Herman has long been a prominent figure in California’s artistic community, with his work held in prestigious collections such as Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Hammer Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

A series of large-scale canvases exemplify the vibrant painterly expression that lies at the core of Herman’s practice, with brushstrokes, dashes and lines building substance, texture and color. The Poppies paintings show multi-hued, intricately layered scenes of leaves and flowers, while Mountain is a landscape painting composed of bold, broad brushstrokes in blue, turquoise and white. Another painting features the eerie image of a human skull – a recurring motif in Herman’s work that, contrasting with his otherwise vivacious style, evokes the inevitability of death. These expansive paintings illustrate how Herman’s experimental approach to color produces captivating compositions and striking imagery sprawling across surfaces of significant width and height.

Herman’s ceramic works, sculpted from wheel-thrown clay, echo the gestural and spontaneous vibrancy found in their wall-mounted canvas counterparts. His large, hand-crafted vessels transcend traditional ceramic design techniques with their irregular shapes, spontaneous voids and protrusions. Ignited by Herman’s fascination with the transformative power of color during the glazing process, each piece is marked by a painterly approach that treats the clay as a canvas.

A dining table and a coffee table, meanwhile feature tabletops consisting of square ceramic panels that reflect the distinctive painterly expression of Herman’s vessels and canvas works,  The works show how the artist incorporates clay into functional structures, imbuing them with the same vibrant approach to color and composition.

A collection of tiny ceramic cups from Herman’s Mescal series are modelled after a jicara – a traditional Mexican cup made from a half-dried fruit and used to drink mezcal. The glazing on the pots emulates the same textures and techniques seen in the larger ceramic works and the paintings.

By transforming imperfection and spontaneity into an expressive, evocative artistic form, Herman stands as a pioneering example within contemporary art and design practices. Showcasing his polyphonous orchestrations of colour and form, and his unpredictable and experimental way of depicting nature’s materiality, this exhibition shows how the artist pushes the boundaries of both ceramic art and painting.