Art on Capitol Hill

By Jim Magner
Hill Rag
February 2003

Artist Profile: Michael Berman

If you have strolled through the throngs of people and specialty vendors along the promenade of the Eastern Market on a weekend within the past eights years, you have seen the art of Michael Berman. It is a dance of color that leaps out at your imagination. In the midst of the dance is a dream-like image of the market itself, looking quite serene and dignified. It is one of the most popular prints on the Hill. The original hangs in the Mayor’s office.

You will also see a man with a lot of hair and a hat. That’s Michael. If he looks like a combination of artist and jazz drum it’s because he is. He has been a drummer since he was a child and music plays a central role in his life and the creation of his work.

Michael’s work started out big and abstract at the University of Maryland where he earned his BFA and later at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Since then, he has discovered different styles and techniques. It is in his nature to explore. Some of his work is architectural – mostly renderings of structures that are disappearing from the older neighborhoods. That is another of his personal interests - documenting the old homes, fire stations and commercial buildings that are endangered by changes natural to an evolving community. This interest in turn, has resulted in numerous commissions to do portraits of the homes of Capital Hill.

His non-commissioned work usually evolves from abstract treatments of color to become a landscape, cityscape, and more often, figurative – with the help of his music of choice.

Michael, still young, has no road map to the future, no eight-step program for himself or his art. Like his approach with art, he will improvise, searching beyond the established gallery system for alternative ways to make art a part of a living culture – and an integral part of the neighborhood.

Michael Berman can be reached through his website: www.his.com/mberman or by email: mberman @his.com.

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