John Hersey

Using the phrase “physical lyricism” to describe his earlier work, John Hersey is best known for his larger scale abstract paintings. Although his recent cast bronze and welded steel sculpture carries much of the feeling of that period, his more recent paintings have been primarily figurative. Throughout, John Hersey has continued his drawings, paintings, and etchings.

John Hersey was born in New York City in 1943, son of journalist and author John Hersey and Frances Ann Cannon. He attended the Pomfret School in Connecticut where he began painting under the tutelage of Charles Cole. He studied under Victor De Pau before entering Yale University as an Art and Architecture major. During his university years, John also worked for the architect John M. Johansen, A.I.A., studied Drawing at Stanford University, and Philosophy of Art and Painting at the University of California at Berkeley.

John Hersey received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale in 1965 and entered the Yale School of Architecture. He studied photography with Walker Evans. Following graduate school, he worked as draftsman for various architectural firms in New York City, most notably with John M. Johansen again. John Hersey lived in Paris and Rome before establishing a painting studio and darkroom in New York City in the early 1970s.
 
In 1983, John Hersey opened Gallery Hirondelle, Inc. in Soho, NYC, representing a spectrum of contemporary artists until 1988. As Chairman of Cast the Sleeping Elephant, a project of the artist Mihail, Hersey assisted in funding (enlisting Namibia as a donor nation) and creating a life-size cast bronze bull elephant that was placed in the gardens of the United Nations in New York in 1998 as a symbol of all wildlife.

 John Hersey presently lives and works in Millbrook, NY.