Victoria Shalvah Herzberg
Artist Bio
Victoria Shalvah Herzberg is a scientist as well as an artist whose academic studies of evolutionary genetics eventually merged with an interest in native plants, particularly their ability to quickly evolve in response to environmental challenges. In addition to studying, propagating, and caring for these plants, she routinely depicts them artistically to call attention to their innate beauty. Their seasonal variation especially appealed because she’d grown up in Houston, TX, where all seasons were variations of summer and plants rarely, if ever, prepared for hibernation as they routinely do in Vermont, where she now lives.
Shalvah attended graduate school at St Louis University (M.S.) and the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX (Ph.D.). She then studied art informally while serving on the research faculty of (what was then) Dartmouth Medical School. She became accomplished in watercolor painting, hand-pulled printmaking, and, in 3 dimensions, sculpture, pottery, and knitting. After she retired from academia, she was awarded Signature Membership in the Vermont Watercolor Society (2006) and is now an artist member of Two Rivers Printmaking Studio (TRPS) in White River Junction, VT, and AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon, NH.
Shalvah has shown artwork in over 25 juried and group exhibitions throughout New England and has also mounted 6 solo exhibits. In 2023, she conceived of and curated “Many Artists, One Model…”, an exhibit at TRPS as a tribute to her long-time fellow artist and friend, Penelope Bennett. She has published her images, paired with poems by her husband Don Herzberg, in two books, “Mirror of Seasons” and “Body Language”.