Urban Abstraction
New Work by Don Hershman

August 1 - August 31, 2025

In URBAN ABSTRACTION, Don Hershman brings the unseen into focus—reframing the overlooked industrial details of the cityscape as striking works of abstraction. Through a series of 19 meticulously crafted paintings on canvas and wood panel, Hershman transforms fragments of urban life—pavement cracks, garage doors, graffiti textures, and aging building facades—into rich visual compositions that blur the line between the literal and the abstract.

Using pencil, ink, and acrylic, Hershman isolates and elevates these raw details, creating a dialogue between material surface and aesthetic form. What might otherwise fade into the background of daily life becomes foreground—magnified, reframed, and reimagined. Each painting encourages viewers to not only appreciate its constructed beauty, but to recognize the source: a familiar echo of the environments we move through every day.

By bringing the city’s visual language into the gallery, URBAN ABSTRACTION invites us to reconsider how we define art, how we observe our surroundings, and how beauty often lives in plain sight—just waiting to be noticed.

Biography:
Painter Don Hershman balances dual careers as an accomplished podiatric surgeon and artist, driven by a deep need for creative expression. He finds the same sense of flow in painting as in surgery, transforming subjects into vibrant, reimagined spaces infused with passion and humor.

Hershman’s work has been collected nationally and internationally. His paintings have been jury-selected for the de Young Open (2020, 2023) and exhibited in solo shows, including Donald and Victor: Under the Influence (2021) and Code Switching (2023) at Salomon Arts Gallery in New York. His I AM A BARN series, exploring resilience through aging structures, was exhibited at Radian Gallery in San Francisco and featured in SF Arts Magazine (2024).

In 2025, Hershman’s work was on view at 45 Fremont and One Front Street in San Francisco, and featured at Sea Ranch Lodge (Sonoma County), with solo exhibitions at Firehouse Arts Center (Pleasanton, CA), Wessling Contemporary (San Francisco), and Artifact Gallery (New York) slated for later this year.