“I don’t try to master water on the canvas; I meet it as a partner and let light do the composing.”

—Alexis Herman

Alexis Herman is a contemporary painter who approaches water as both material intelligence and metaphor. Through calibrated drawing and hyper-real color, she observes how surface, light, and rhythm behave—then allows those behaviors to guide the image. Rather than imposing a scene, Herman listens; the painting becomes a conversation between perception and chance, precision and release. In several works, nearly invisible lines of handwriting nestle into the veins of a leaf—language returning to aura—subtly tilting the real toward the surreal.

Based in Little Silver, New Jersey, Herman exhibits along the East Coast with works ranging from intimate ripple studies to expansive seascapes. Her practice emphasizes the tension she embraces: control and surrender, clarity and mystery, observation and reverie—inviting viewers to experience water not only as an image, but as a regulating, resonant force.