KURT HERRMANN
About Kurt Herrmann
Kurt Herrmann is a painter rooted in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania, where his practice is inseparable from the colors, silence, and wild terrain that surround him. While his career has taken his work to international stages—from Tasmania and Auckland to New Orleans and Miami—his creative center remains firmly planted in rural Lock Haven, where he was born and continues to live.
"Even if a painting was initially inspired by something exotic, or an extremely personal event on the other side of the planet," Herrmann says, "all my work is filtered through my studio in the hills of Appalachia. The colors, silence, space, seasons, landscape, impact everything I make. It’s inescapable."
At once grounded and transcendent, Herrmann’s paintings embody a dialogue between place, memory, and the universal resonance of color. As one critic noted, his works “boom across a room or murmur gently to a close observer,” revealing a duality of energy and introspection. Whether inspired by Minoan art, Appalachian light, or the streamlined beauty of sea life, Herrmann’s canvases invite viewers into a sensory world where color speaks with clarity, complexity, and feeling.
Since 2012 Herrmann has shown at prominent venues including Scope Miami Beach, Penny Contemporary in Tasmania, The Other Art Fair in Australia, 12 Gallery in Auckland New Zealand, James Oliver Gallery in Philadelphia, and Sidewinder Gallery in Illinois, which was featured in Time Out Chicago. He holds a BFA from Lock Haven University, where he studied under painter Bill Foster, a Columbia-trained mentor whose rigor left a lasting mark.
Working in both figurative and abstract modes, Herrmann identifies first and foremost as a colorist. His large-scale paintings pulse with saturated hues and elemental shapes, often drawn from mountain scenes or natural forms such as tree trunks, deer legs, winter skies, but also from memory and imagined places.
Central to Herrmann’s philosophy is the idea that color is both autonomous and communicative. His ongoing Color Bomb series channels this ethos, offering distilled color fields that evoke mood, place, and sensation. Herrmann seeks to capture what he calls “absolute color” a kind of chromatic essence plucked from his environment, then reimagined into bold, musical compositions.
Herrmann's work continues to evolve in scale and tone—recent paintings such as Koko and Dogwood Echo, exhibited at Sozo Gallery in Charlotte, explore the subtleties of white and cream as gateways to brighter hidden frequencies.