Ron Silver

About Ron

Ron Silver (born and based in New York) is a self-taught artist whose work explores the depths of human expression with a unique perspective and attention to detail. Working primarily in oil, he develops paintings that address fundamental questions of meaning, presence, and fulfillment. His multidisciplinary practice includes painting, printmaking, drawing, and bookmaking.

As a young man, Silver discovered the Metropolitan Museum of Art while cycling down Fifth Avenue on his way to work. During the first of what would become daily visits to the museum's galleries, he found inspiration in artists like the Dogon tribesmen, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Titian, Modigliani, and Schiele, whose work transformed his understanding of the power of art to represent the vastness of our emotional landscape.

Guided by the directness and sincerity of artists who confront large themes without ornament, Silver paints with a frankness that resists sentimentality. His figurative works are built through expressive gesture, making the hand of the artist visible and integral to the image. Through sustained attention to small, often overlooked moments, Silver reframes everyday gestures as meditations on being and existence.

In 1990, Silver established Bubby's restaurant in New York's Tribeca neighborhood. For 35 years, he spent his days entertaining New York's creative class of artists, musicians, and writers so that he could support his own work in the studio with the autonomy and self-determination that are the cornerstones of an artistic life.