If art can become a source of heightened awareness that enlarges our conscious life then it adds a dimension to our existence that is both life enhancing and extremely pleasurable, says Burton Silverman. What I hope to bring to these paintings often of unspectacular images of unheralded people or even landscapes is a sense of validity of the everyday texture of life.
        Silvermans first one man exhibition took place in 1956 at the Davis Galleries in New York City. Since then, he has created works for 27 solo shows in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. He has appeared in numerous national and international exhibitions including the Mexico City Museum of Art, the Royal Academy of Art in London, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Academy of Design, the American Watercolor Society and the Butler Institute of American Art which held a retrospective of his work in 1999. Public collections include the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the New Britain Museum, the Mint Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery.
         Commissioned portraits by Silverman have been placed on the covers of Time Magazine and have been included in the Profiles segment of the New Yorker. In 1998, he received the John Singer Sargent Medal award by the American Society of Portrait Artists.