The Rebirth of Venus

by Samuel Hernandez

“Samuel S. Hernandez is a Washington, D.C.–based painter working in oil on canvas. He reorients the familiar by bending classical forms into quiet, dreamlike images that unsettle perception without spectacle. Each painting evolves slowly—atmospheric veils of color, scumbled edges that blur and shift, and wiped surfaces that reveal subtle underlayers—so presence and absence coexist on the same plane. Hernandez paints to give shape to what words leave unsaid, balancing what is seen, remembered, and felt. His work invites a second look, coaxing the invisible out of the everyday and rewarding the patient observer with a language beyond words”