Self-taught and deeply private about his practice for years, he opened Bubby's in Tribeca in 1990 for one reason: to make art without having to sell it to survive. He has been painting for decades. He is only now letting the world catch up.

Silver decided to show what he could do just a few years ago. He works primarily in oil - figurative, naïve, emotionally direct- and charcoal or gouaches.

His subjects range from actresses of the golden age of French cinema to ballroom dance movements to the quiet complexity of women. Japanese aesthetics, American folk art, Egon Schiele, and the Renaissance all live somewhere in his canvases without any of them dominating.

He has exhibited in New York, Mexico and Barcelona, having his works in many private collections around the globe.