For nearly sixty years, Burton Silverman's art has maintained a discrete kind of political relevancy. Outspoken through times of tremendous change in American values, ideals and social structures, Silverman has been fueled by an intense humanist concern for the intimate politics of friendship and family and how these flower into a society that cares for its most vulnerable or marginalized citizens. Through subtle and incisive gestural paintings and drawings, he presents a well examined vision of deep humanity. Nuanced faces evocative of complex life stories speak through powerful and simple compositions.

Silverman's work has been acquired by dozens of the country's finest museums and he has received innumerable awards and accolades, including a recent lifetime achievement award for his contributions to representational art. His career began with drawings and paintings of seminal figures in the civil rights movement as it gained traction in the 1950's, culminating in museum acquisitions of his drawings of the Montgomery Bus Boycott(s.) He has painted dozens of major luminaries in a style of riveting portraiture that subtly fades into confident painterly brushstrokes towards the painting's periphery. A refined and virtuoso mastery of all the requisites of a great representational painter – use of light, volume, compositional arrangements and psychological intensity – is on view in this major showing of his recent work. "The Same America" is his first solo exhibition in the city of San Francisco and his first at Frey Norris Gallery. Approximately thirty works, oil paintings, pastels, watercolors and drawings, will be on display, many of which have never been shown in public.