Herb Edwards was born in Brownsville, PA in 1940. He grew up in a home where his father, who had a great appreciation for the arts, encouraged his son’s creativity. He found early inspiration at home, where impressionist reproductions hung on the wall and Stevan Dohanos, a famed Saturday Evening Post illustrator and friend of his parents, was often a guest.
Whether it’s the majestic canyons of New Mexico or the quiet harbors of Cape Cod, painter and Falmouth resident Herb Edwards captures the beauty of his surroundings. Despite the distinct differences in geography, the dramatic light and natural beauty in both regions has inspired Edwards for decades.
Herb Edwards was born in Brownsville, PA in 1940. He grew up in a home where his father, who had a great appreciation for the arts, encouraged his son’s creativity. He found early inspiration at home, where impressionist reproductions hung on the wall and Stevan Dohanos, a famed Saturday Evening Post illustrator and friend of his parents, was often a guest.
His childhood inspirations led him the University of New Mexico where he studied painting, photography and graphic design under the tutelage of Taos art colony members. Once he received his BFA in 1963, he worked in commercial graphic design before going on to receive his MFA from Pratt Institute in 1970.
Herb was a professor of fine arts for twenty years at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey. He played a key role in the development of the Visual Arts Program, teaching courses in Photography, Painting, Graphic Communication, Drawing and Art History.
In 1990 he left teaching to devote full energies to his art and moved to a small artist’s community in Northern New Mexico, painting the high desert landscape and exhibiting in Santa Fe. “I wanted to try my hand at working with galleries and getting involved in the art field full-time.”
While many painters devote themselves to a single medium, Edwards finds merit in both oil and acrylic. “Oils are a traditional medium with their own qualities. You can build them up and work them – they’re very malleable – while acrylic is a fast-drying artificial material. I use them in very different ways. I paint spontaneously in one sitting with acrylics and build up the oils over time.”
His diverse paintings in both mediums have a lightness of touch and simplicity of line reflecting the natural, uncluttered beauty of New England and America’s far west.
Herb Edwards has exhibited extensively in major galleries and museums throughout the United States. His paintings are in many private collections here and abroad, including The American Embassy Collection in New Guinea. He and his wife, the painter Lillia Frantin, maintain their home and studio in a 200 year old farmhouse in the village of North Falmouth on Cape Cod.
