Shalom Brilliant was born in New York City in 1947.  Apart from two years at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture, he has not studied art in a formal setting.  He received an MA in History followed by a law degree, and spent almost forty years of his professional life as a trial lawyer, mostly with the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.  Throughout those years, he produced numerous paintings and drawings, but his most prolific period has been the past few years, following his retirement from public service. 

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The subjects and styles of Shalom’s work is varied, with the style often determined by the subject.  His earliest paintings tended toward surrealism of a kind one might expect from the 1960s college student that he was at the time.  His more recent paintings generally tend toward realism, impressionism, or cubism.  Having spent a lifetime in a professional career centered upon verbal persuasion, Shalom pointedly refrains from using art to express ideas that can be expressed verbally. 

 

Shalom and his wife, Cynthia, live in  Raanana, Israel.  

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