Request for help

Right now, we are especially interested in any information on the location/ownership of the three paintings shown below.  If you know anything about them, please send your information to info@kershisnik.com.

a thousand times we never knew the danger, 40x28 inches

finding my way home, 12x12 inches

winter dancing, 9x12 inches

Below is an email communication we sent out to all those registered on our website regarding a Retrospective exhibit of Brian’s work coming up in 2024. In preparation for this exhibit, we are collecting as much information as we can about ownership of Brian’s original paintings.  If you have any information about the location/ownership of any of Brian’s paintings we would welcome your input.  Again anything you send to us should be send to info@kershisnik.com. Here is the original email which explains our project:

Dear Friends,

We would like to express our deep appreciation to all who responded to our previous letter requesting photos of original Kershisnik paintings.  We were able to add a lot of valuable information to our database.  If you responded to our first email, there is no need to respond again unless you have added new paintings to your collection.

This email is a follow up to encourage any of you who didn’t respond last time but had intended to, or if you have acquired any artwork since then.  Again, we will greatly appreciate your assistance and hope you can take the time to send your photos and information.  Brian is working on an editioned relief print (signed and numbered) that will be sent as a thank you to all those who have provided this critical information for our exhibition.

Here is the original email with an explanation of what we are doing and why:

The Museum of Art at BYU in Provo, Utah, has scheduled an extensive one-man show of my work in 2024.  This is a great opportunity for me, but it is a fairly massive project to identify and locate the work that the curators would like to include.  I have maintained an extensive archive of most of my work, but my records of the current locations of these works are not as complete.  So, I am requesting your assistance.  To those of you who have collected any of my original paintings and are willing to share the following information, I ask that you please send me handheld digital photos (including a detail shot of the title, if possible) of the pieces in your possession with the owner’s name, address, optional phone number and source of acquisition (source gallery).  Do not reply to this email, but please send your information to info@kershisnik.com.  I will add this information to my Index, but please know this information is not accessed publicly.  

For this upcoming exhibit, or any future such exhibits, you may be contacted by me or my estate to ascertain your willingness to lend pieces from your collection.  If you are willing to consider it at that time, your contact information will be shared, with your permission, with the exhibiting institution.  I would recommend you consider such loans as long as the terms and protections offered meet your approval.  Sending the photos and contact info to me by no means obligates you to any loan whatsoever.  It helps me keep accurate provenance records.  I only suggest that considering lending artwork to such exhibits is good for both of us in establishing history and provenance for pieces in your collection.  You are free to require collector’s anonymity in the painting labels at such exhibitions if you wish.

Thank you for your assistance in this effort.  If you have any questions before sending the information, please let me know.

Cheers, brian

What is your intention?

People sometimes want to know.  I am approached at show receptions or emailed or visited at the studio, and this question comes up.  I do not believe that it is a bad question, but I will tell you why I avoid answering it too precisely.

 

People have a host of reasons for why they connect to artwork.  When I am done with a piece, I feel like I become a spectator, just like you.  Little more.  Of course, conversations about my work emerge often, but if I am not careful about how much I reveal my own intentions, I run the danger of closing the door on what the painting can mean to you or anyone else.  I will talk about the experience of painting or discuss ideas of possible meanings, but frankly, I believe that if artists will delve deeply and truly enough into their own experience, then they are usually talking about aspects of everyone’s experience.  What you take away from the painting is every bit as legitimate as what I intended, possibly more legitimate than what I intended.  The assumption is erroneous that because I painted it, you are obligated to accommodate my intention.  

 

Art should open up, not close down conversation. I feel that very often too much attention to my intention precipitates conversations that are peripheral to what artwork can or should be accomplishing.  What do I intend?  That my work is better—maybe even much better—than I intended.

How true?

There is often, though not always, an initial driving impression to be clothed in one’s medium. An artist in any medium is really a kind of translator, and although language is often an element in that translation, it is not simply a language to language transformation (as if that is simple!). In any translation things are lost and gained. Translation can and should be an intensely creative endeavor. Are we being true to the message? If so, in what ways? What it means? How it feels? It’s metaphorical and spiritual significance? True to the weight or lightness of the initiating impression? Is it smooth or staccato? Does it yell or whisper? Does the new medium allow for these things? Must other means, absent in the “driving impulse,” be applied in order to better convey what it “is” and not always just how it “looks” or “sounds” or what we think it “means,” etc.? Are we unable to translate the impulse, but find ourselves exploring an altogether new thing that we would never have found without that initial attempt? Sometimes there is not an initiating impulse beyond just looking for something and these can even be among the best and truest works. This is the sort of mess I wade through at the studio. Actually I think I never stop wading. Wading implies shallow water. It isn’t.

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Collecting art

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I collect art. Some of that emerges naturally from producing it. As you might suspect I have a fairly good collection of my own work. I also collect the original work of others— living and dead— by trade or purchase. Much of this can be done economically with some creativity. I go through the trouble of doing it because of a need to be close to art and artists I love. (When I say artists I love, it doesn't necessarily mean I want to have lunch with all of them. Some are endeared to me by the expansiveness or clarity of their vision or their devotion or their humanity, though I suspect some might make awkward or even unpleasant companions.) Whether it's an etching by Goya or a drawing by one of my kids, I prefer something as close to the actual process of its making as I can manage. I love to see and handle and live with relics of the creative process I have come to value—those artifacts that still bear the marks of the agony or delighted surprise of their inception. For me, the joy of experiencing these artifacts warrants the trouble and expense of their acquisition.

Looking for something

Looking for something

By Brian Kershisnik

I make art because I am searching for things. I do not approach my easel with an overriding objective to change anything or anyone. Rather I am looking for something. Looking teaches me, and teases thinking out of me, and precipitates internal and external conversation that I believe do me good. My job of course is to paint, and to paint very well, but I have observed that art often accomplishes something quite independently of any artist’s intentions. It is understandably difficult to accomplish things beyond your own intentions and so my way is to walk forward into the work looking for something and being open to finding something else altogether.

My subjects are typically not grand, they are you and me – a little awkward in their common work-a-day holiness. They are often not “getting it”, or perhaps getting it wrong. They are misunderstood, like you and I are misunderstood, but loved and lovely too. They are a little heavy footed in their dancing, a little disheveled in their useful and inscrutable activities, a little disoriented in their best of intentions. The subjects in my paintings are metaphorical and mythological autobiography and when it is working, they are you too.

I admit frankly to the pursuit of truth and beauty. I also admit that the aspects of these principles that draw me in are illusive and difficult to comprehend. I cannot fathom what they are independently, let alone combined. They are not things to be manipulated and controlled by me. I find them often enough to at least keep me at it, and each occurrence has aspects that are unique and unrepeatable. I feel a bit like I’m looking for a home I can’t quite remember – a foreigner trying to fit in an alien circumstance, but truth, love and hope persist and build and remind and change me. Being changed for better or worse is invasive. Building often involves excavation. Life and art require a million coarse and delicate adjustments. Healing involves comfort and crisis, triumph and overthrow, invasion and retreat. It takes discipline and practice to enjoy reality because it is never only limited to the fun parts. Life requires healing which necessitates work and courage. These things do not exclude rest and joy and even fun. If you need surgery, you will want a surgeon who is not afraid to use a saw, but not one who has no other tools.

If my work is to ever be important, it will not be because I was successful in trying to second guess the multitude. It will be because what I found to be authentically important to me, is, or becomes, authentically important to many others. I believe in the importance of beauty, but must acknowledge that it can be both an effective conveyor of truth and also a distraction from it. Perhaps it is linking truth and beauty in their uncountable facets that should be hoped for and sought. This linking is a pursuit, not a location, and artworks that are the proper byproducts of that searching are good for us even when most fall short of the actual fusion. I believe that I have found this truthful beauty to envelope birth and death, union and isolation, victory and defeat, knowledge and bewilderment, pleasure and agony, profundity and silliness, and as I desperately scan the horizon for solutions, I sometimes look down to find them right on my lap.

Nativity: an essay

By Brian Kershisnik

 To purchase the ‘Nativity’ print, please visit www.newvisionart.com

This painting is called “Nativity”. The decision to avoid the definite article illuminates a particularly fascinating and miraculous aspect of Jesus’ advent. Notwithstanding the overwhelming significance of Jesus coming, He came very much like you and I came. His birth was like your birth and mine. He came into our dirt and sweat and blood and milk. He arrived into our hunger and discomfort, just as everyone else on the planet ever has. His birth was, in that sense, unremarkable. It hurt his mother and Him.

It was very likely troubling to Joseph as well (his vexation probably complicated by their displacement from home) and likely not so troubling to the midwives, smiling through the bloody ordeal as midwives do. I know that no midwives are mentioned in the scriptures, but bear in mind that almost none of the details of his birth are mentioned in these holy texts. Even the stable is inferred by the brief mention of an improvised cradle– his being “laid in a manger”. The chance of a young woman having her first child away from her usual residence and not being attended by women (even strangers) seems to me very unlikely. Women would come. They would hear; they would help. I feel sure of it.

In undertaking this sacred subject on such a large scale (the original is 17 feet long) I decided to not look so much for an actual historical reality, but rather to try to fathom an emotional reality to the experience. Virtually all of the visual memory we have of Jesus’ birth has come from centuries of this kind of imagining–the event being so very important, the historical details so very scant.

Perhaps the sheer number of them is a clear indication that I became engaged with the angels. The births of my own children felt so very “attended to” by otherworldly beings. Perhaps they were ancestors and descendants; any who had particular interest in our little nativities. Since none of us would have a chance of salvation without Jesus, it felt obvious that all beings looking to this redemption would take a peculiar interest in this birth. The number of angels in my work kept multiplying. I have counted them several times, but I come up with different numbers. I rather like not knowing exactly.

My original plan to include the conventional beasts was eclipsed by this cloud of witnesses. I did have a bit of room for a dog and her pups. Although no mention is made of any stable occupants, I wanted the animals to be represented and I love dogs. They have long been a symbol of fidelity in western art, so I put them in since Jesus’ coming is the ultimate and most impossible example of keeping the unfathomable promise of His essential condescension. Only the dog can see the glorious river of angels. The mortals depicted, like us, are understandably and rightly distracted with the quotidian tasks at hand.

I believe that the human hunger for dramatic conclusions (to sporting events or books or movies) is linked to our own impossible redemption. Our chances for reconciliation were all but lost when…this happened. Part of our attraction to these dramatic endings is because it is, in part, our story too. He said He would come. Then impossibly and improbably, He did, but not as we would have expected. Certainly the epic drama of redemption is far from over, but the message to me is this: He came. He came. Thank God, He came.

A general note about “She Will Find What Is Lost”

By Brian Kershisnik

A painting of mine called “She Will Find What Is Lost” has lately been receiving a bit of attention.  This is all fine and good, and indeed the people who are responding to this image are doing so from a large spectrum of extremely varied experiences.  That is an indication to me that I have stumbled into something that is needed.  The circumstances that drove me into this piece are, as usual, particular and personal and not necessarily needed to have a personal reaction and use for this piece yourself.  I have often said that my paintings are a kind of mythological autobiography whether the subjects are men, women, animals, buildings, etc.  It was not, for example, intended as a painting about being a woman, but rather a human.  Humans have gender and for fairly specific, but not exclusive reasons, I chose to paint a woman.  I do believe that in art, very often that which is most personal taps into currents that are most general.  In this way great art of the distant past can continue to inform and illuminate very current issues.  Finding these “big subjects” involves a kind of dumb luck and often has little or nothing to do with an artist’s conscious intention.

The painting “She Will Find What Is Lost” has been used to underline and illustrate a good number of private and public experiences as well as political or social agenda.  This has led to a notion of my endorsing certain views.  Of course, I agree with some of these views, some of these views I am ignorant of, and others I actually disagree with.  Most of the stories I hear are completely consistent with the hopes I retain for the usefulness of this picture which is an extremely and intensely personal sort of usefulness.  I cannot pretend to be able to dictate how people are to feel about my work or the narratives that they will bring to it.  That is in fact anathema to my understanding of how art works and should work.  If I may ask it of you, I ask that you respect that my intention for this piece was to speak to the most intensely private and intimate kind of supernatural interference, influence, and assistance, whatever your particular experience.  I don’t have to agree with you to believe that whatever your gender, circumstance, or issue, many unseen forces are interested in you, love you, and work to influence matters for your profound benefit.  Most of what we all do is resist it, misinterpret it, or mess it up, but my experience indicates that these unseen efforts persist impossibly.  I thank God for that.

On a more temporal level, please be reminded that it is a licensed image and any promotional or commercial use must be done by permission.

Mormon Essay

By Brian Kershisnik

I am a Mormon.  Warning: The following text contains some religious content as well as invitations to learn more about my church.  You will not be bombarded with proselytizing materials or doctrinal messages from my website, but this essay will just be here and possibly updated periodically.  Please feel free to read it, but obviously you are under no obligation.  So here goes.

Some of you may have seen the short video on YouTube or lds.org about my being a Mormon.  If not, I recommend you see it both for a peek at my notions of the cosmos as well as a look at my studio in Kanosh, Utah.  Whatever your assessment of my cosmos, it is a pretty great studio to be sure.  Better than I deserve, no doubt, but I am glad to have it and use it.  Ethan Vincent was working on a documentary (his own self-motivated and unfunded project, so of course understandably unfinished) when he was commissioned to do several video portraits for the Mormon Church, and this dovetailed nicely with his project that was already underway with me.  The result was satisfying, largely because of the skills and trustworthy intrusions of Ethan Vincent, and I was very pleased to participate.

My intention here is to invite you to know more about the Mormon Church, or as it is officially known, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“Mormons” is understandably easier to say) should you be in the least bit curious.

I was raised all over the world and have known and loved many, many people of vastly different religious and secular convictions.  I believe truly in the virtue and holy participation of many of these people in the complex and extremely difficult work of redemption for this world.  My conviction is that my church has a vital and central role to play in the unfolding history of the redemption of this earth and believe it would be silly for people to not engage in it who otherwise would if they had some, or better, information.

There is much good that is accomplished by individuals, and I prize greatly my individual effort to be and do good, to improve my humanity and the condition of those immediately around me.  There are also very important things that are accomplished by the collective effort of groups and organizations.  Group actions and hierarchies often push us into actions and interactions that we might otherwise have avoided, but nevertheless do us and those around us good — often affecting a circle much wider than our own small one.  Both individual and group efforts have their profound advantages and disadvantages and I am convinced that both are needed notwithstanding the failings of each.  My conviction of the truth and importance of my church is firmly linked to rich positive revelatory experience, but also does not ignore the mistakes and awkwardnesses that are infused in any organization involving human beings.  My assurance of God’s interest in my participation in this church does not incline me to require of that experience perfection of action and result, or unmitigated bliss, but of course there needs to be enough satisfaction and bliss, and thank God there is usually more and to spare.

Most people reading this will be at least vaguely aware of the young Mormon men and women going about in pairs looking for people to teach.  Of course these missionaries are very interested in talking to you and of course they want you to join the Mormon Church.  Be patient and tolerant.  They have devoted a few years of their life to this effort and are anxious to engage.  They can also be a good resource for what Mormonism is about.  Interestingly, they are not so much receptacles of vast amounts of information, but they know enough to get you started on your own understanding of the subject — an understanding that will hopefully lead to revelation of your own.  Everybody can guess what the missionaries, or even I, want you to do.  The point is always to find God and get a sense of what He wants you to do.  I recommend and invite you to take a few minutes to widen your understanding enough to include talking to some of these missionaries or visiting mormon.org for information that may prove very useful or at least interesting.  I am happy to field any questions you might have or refer you to resources I find useful.  I will not, without your permission, put anyone else in contact with you.

The world is full of truth and beauty (if indeed those two things can or should be distinguished).  It comes at us from every angle.  It is often unexpected and hard to categorize.  The sources can be sublime or inconvenient and even at times a bit unruly.  I believe the work and message of the Mormon Church to be vital, significant and true.  I am pleased to be a part of it.

brian

Painting God

by Brian Kershisnik
Art, Belief and Meaning Symposium
BYU Museum of Art Auditorium
Friday, November 7, 2008

So, should I paint God? Certainly I have done just that, dozens of times, and yet I continue and continue to ask myself whether or not I should. If there is any merit in those works of mine that depict God, I believe that it is partially because I have never been able to lay down the question of whether or not I should have made them.

This is difficult for me because, notwithstanding regular sublime experiences while painting, I believe the entire realm of pictorial representation is tainted with rather unsavory elements that threaten the concept of holiness from the very onset. I’ll just mention three. Briefly.

1.     First, art is artifice; at its best art reaches for the truth through artificial avenues.  For example, in visual imagery feelings of esteem and sympathy for the subject can be almost immediately aroused in the viewer through the use of physical beauty or attractiveness.  To achieve this end, artists often resort to transient, current trends.  Yet, as hardwired as we all are to like someone because they are beautiful, all of us would like to think we know that outer beauty does not indicate virtue.  So, how does an artist, appealing only to the eyes by means of oil paint applied to a flat surface, paint virtue?

2.     The second difficulty I see in my art with depictions of holy subjects is that for the professional painter like myself, art is a means of generating revenue and must continually define and redefine itself under the constant attack of my need for money.  In such a grip, how do I differentiate between financial need and an interior need to delve authentically and honestly into a sacred subject?  And how can I be sure I’m even asking myself these questions honestly?  What if the style to which I have become accustomed locks me into making more paintings of the Lord whether or not I “feel like it”?  I am alarmed at how authentically I can “feel like doing something” that would prevent the repossession of my home.

3.     My third struggle with holy subject matter arises from a concern that the production of powerful works of art, sacred or otherwise, could propel an artist (myself, for example, to choose the example that really bothers me) into various degrees of local or general fame and the corrupting and distorting influence of well-meant but unwarranted esteem.  As a painter I am a performer on a stage.  I both love and need my audience and yet they pose a most terribly devastating threat to my accurate perspective.

And so it is, at sea in these thrice (at least thrice) troubled waters that the artist, (Brian, let’s call him) takes up his tools to presume to depict the sacred in some useful, honest and illuminating way.  How can it be done?  I will not venture to answer this question for anyone else, let alone everyone, but I will state candidly that for myself, I am most often far, far better off not doing it – or at least not for the public.  I might even have been known to state, when pressed to take a stand, that I suspect more people than now do, should, perhaps pause long to deeply consider whether they might not be better abstaining from holy subject matter more often.  Children, drawing God with authority and honesty as often as it suits them, I completely except from this rule and from them we can learn a lot about true and right depictions of Deity.    The innocence of children, the limited scope of their audience and their considerable indifference to the reactions and tastes of that audience, protect them.  If as adults we could retain the untainted, unapologetic power and honest symbolism of children, then we like them should by all means fall to, drawing God with the honest authority of that sort of faith.  I myself must depend on such childlike revelations either sneaking up on me or tumbling accidentally into my work and experience this very rarely, though I manage it as often as I can.  Accidents are a difficult sort of stuff to manage.

But to speak to the three troubles previously acknowledged, if the first (the inevitable reliance on artifice) can be abundantly and systemically acknowledged within the work itself and the second and third (pressing need for money and the dangers of esteem) can be kept in check (if not completely ignored) at least in the production stages of my work, then I believe it is possible to explore through art sacred subjects in ways that are edifying to both the artist and the public.  Works of art will savor of their primary motivations and, regardless of the approval or disappointment of collectors which can very well be deceiving, the artist is ultimately accountable before God for his own motivations.  My own salvation is abundantly more important than my professional success.

I hardly know how to describe what must sound like a psychosis, but I feel a profound accountability for all of the people in my paintings.  The ways that I manipulate them must acknowledge on their part a kind of agency, for they must never become the mere toys of my fancy.  All the more certainly then, in my depictions of God I must stand ready to account for what I have done and my motivations for doing so.  In this matter I am in constant need of self analysis and course correction, which is nothing other than repentance.

In conclusion, to answer my initial question, “should I paint God?” I have determined that it would be as insincere for me to avoid all paintings with God in them as it would be for me to paint nothing else.  I would hope that my discipleship colors every subject no matter how secular it may appear on the surface, but when it comes to painting God as a subject I never feel free of the searching question of whether or not it is appropriate and acceptable this time.  I have no intention to free myself of that question, nor to cower when it feels right to proceed.

“By proving contraries truth is made manifest.”
–         Joseph Smith Jr.

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey.”
–         Wendell Berry

“Art is a lie, but a lie that tells the truth.”
–         Pablo Picasso

“One cannot learn much and be comfortable.  One cannot learn much and let anyone else be comfortable.”
–         Charles Fort, Wild Talents

I Know I Don't Know What I'm Doing

Brian T. Kershisnik

In a sense more profound than I can say, I don’t know what I am doing.  When people learn that I am a painter and ask me what I paint, I have difficulty answering.  Usually inquirers are seeking only the short answer and must be embarrassed or annoyed at my stumbles and what probably looks like attempts to conceal something.  I used to say (only to myself) that I was stalling for the arrival of a clearer understanding, but gradually the reality of my authentic ignorancebecame clear to me.  I hope that my responses have since then become less ridiculous if not less illuminating, and I will here make another attempt.

My current conclusion as to what I paint is that I don’t know and I’m trying to be more at peace with that awkward reality.  I don’t mean by this that I think I’m a bad painter, I am in fact, one of my favorite painters. No one’s artwork moves me as often to tears or laughter, insight and revelation, ecstatic discovery, and joyful or fearful views of the truth as does my own. (No doubt this has something to do with the fact that I am generally pretty heavily involved in its production.)  I am not painting about something I have learned and wish to explain to others, but rather something I am trying to understand myself– the problems of being this particular human being in progress.  I don’t paint people to show you who they are, but as part of trying to discover who they are, and I believe I fall in love with every one of them.  The questions involved in a painting, if I know them at all, are very difficult to articulate. I’m following a hunch in search of a question by acting with the tools of my trade and in this process, often unexpectedly and even unintentionally something of another world– of the other world, something of God– leaks out.  Then whether my abilities are frail or splendid, they are either way woefully inadequate and that is exactly where I want to be.  Painting for me is anxious disciplined pursuit, trying to sense when and how much to get out of the way so that what is coming can come though it is not expected or even possible to remove myself completely.  They are my hands after all, with my quirks, they are my weaknesses and capacities. It is my sense of humor, tragedy, composition, color and material–each of which use elements of the unexpected to succeed.  The benevolence, indifference, or even malevolence of each idea must be discerned in a process which can take days, weeks, or years.  Through these processes my abilities can be and often are augmented, but are seldom generated.  I try to bring all I have, and am seeking to improve, to the table and, in the ensuing dance of faith and work, I must never, in factI can never, “get it down” or reduce it to an easily regurgitatable process without doing violence to this fragile unnamable “thing” that I do.

As I get older, and more experienced, my sense of what to pursue or discard gets better as does my appreciation for the sacred state of not knowing exactly what you’re doing, just knowing you should be doing it.  I hope this extends to every aspect of my life and every relationship in and out of the studio. Life is much bigger than I am, and so it would be surprising if I felt that I knew what I was doing. What is truly surprising is the sensation that comes to me that I should be doing what I am doing.  Hanging on to this sensation often takes more power than I possess, yet like an act of grace, it persists unbelievably.

Stewardship and the Leak

Brian Kershisnik

All my life I have heard of artistic talent as being a gift.  I, myself, have often referred to such talents as gifts and have been accused of possessing such a gift myself.  So prevalent is the use of this term that I am compelled by sheer consensus to acknowledge that there is truly something to this notion that some people just arrive here with an extraordinary facility or capacity.  The more I am involved with art and the more I contemplate the processes which produce art and the ways which the art of others gains access to me, the more I wonder about the nature of this gift.  Perhaps art is a rend, a hole, a place where a seam in the body or spirit did not quite come together and as a result another pure authentic reality leaks out not necessarily in intentional ways.  Perhaps everyone has these leaks and the artists are the ones who through poetry, dance, story, music or what have you give shape to the issue and substance such that it can be perceived as something more than just a mess that needs mopping or therapy.

I once heard a story reported to be true about a soldier wounded in battle some several centuries ago.  The gash in his abdomen never healed and the physician under whose care he remained for the decade or so of his remaining life learned much about the inner workings of our digestion because he had a window into the gut of this poor fellow.  Thus, this particular and unfortunate defect was put to good use.  I believe that the power of art is derived from what I referred to earlier as another pure authentic reality.  A reality which is concealed for what I trust are good reasons and leaks coming from that world are not necessarily all to be broadcast or celebrated.  Benefit can certainly be derived from such intentioned or unintentional leaks just as in the case of the poor soldier. But only if treated with care.  The same window which provided knowledge to the physician was potentially dangerous even under proper supervision, and thus required incredible and careful stewardship.  I believe that as an artist I should exercise such stewardship.  The invasion to ourselves in creating art as well as the invasions to those who receive the art make it clear to me that the process should be handled with appropriate care, affection, concern and not least virtue.  Even in my pictures which are humorous and whimsical there is an element of danger because they must in some way acknowledge or address the existence of the very center of truth.  In that truth, I have found that there is plenty to laugh about, but not at.  There is plenty of comfort if I can learn how to receive it. There is plenty of joy, but it must have a foundation.  And there is plenty of sorrow, but not despair.

The battles I fight when I paint are intensely personal and their triumphs and defeats are seldom the ones celebrated or mourned by those who receive the art.  It is usually not exactly known why I am so very moved from time to time by something I have received into myself be it film, text, painting, etc.  The artist herself may very well be oblivious to the actual precise source of the chord which now vibrates and causes to vibrate in the recipient that same chord in some unreachable, unremembered or partially recalled chamber.  This exchange though it may contain whimsy and even laughter is in fact very like an ordinance and hence art work should never be displayed thoughtlessly or casually, to say nothing of malevolently.

Various Exhibition Statements

By Brian Kershisnik

Though all my life I have lived and traveled all over the world and hope to continue doing so from time to time, it has been in the isolation of rural Utah that my vision has had a chance to incubate and hatch.  I first moved to Utah to attend college and here I discovered my desire and ability to be an artist.  Now, in a community filled with births, deaths, marriages, droughts, times of plenty, triumphs, tragedies, indifference and faith, I continue to learn about the hand of God and about being a human being the essence of art.

. . .

Art is devotional.  In its creation and in its appreciation it reveals the object of our devotion.  It defines the religion of the artist and of the patron.  This is true from the most so-called "secular" to most overtly "religious" art.

My objective in all of the facets of my life, including art, is to be good, honest, worshipful, virtuous, joyful and full of love.  In spite of my common inadequacy, God continues to express an interest in working with me.

My artwork is not so much a visualization of an ideal as it is an exploration of the process that leads to an ideal.  The often awkward practicing, the occasional detours and lost ground, as well as the triumph of joy.  And then there are those pictures that I love, but for the life of me I cannot figure out.  Oh well, I suppose that too is part of the process.

. . .

At the risk of seeming simple, I must admit that my artistic objective is to make good pictures.  The swirling myriad of form, composition, art history, metaphor, accident, psychology, spirituality, color, content, marks, etc., etc., etc. is far too much for me to harness and direct.  I do my best work when I participate with, rather than compel, the enumerable elements that make up art.

The source of much of my work is other artwork, old and new, my own or others.  Of course my paintings emerge from my own experience (indeed, from whose experience should they otherwise emerge I wonder?) which includes not only what I know, but what I don't know, the latter being without question the heftier reserve and often the more fruitful source.  My gifts or my deficiencies are equally as likely to result in good art when I allow them.

Painting is a holy thing for me.  It helps me to see and to feel and to love and to weep and to laugh with God.  Sometimes the process is holier than the product and sometimes it is the other way around.  I do not say this to suggest that the work should be holy to you or that your response is somehow a gauge of your worthiness. That is obviously your business.  It is holy to me.

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I believe that I make paintings about being human.  They emerge from my love and faith, my fears and awkwardness, from my euphoria and failures together.  All of these may be experienced in a single day and hopefully, when I am permitted, are affectionately contained in good pictures.

As I paint, I am myself interested to watch and see who these people are and to consider what they are doing and why.  I seek to be more of a participant in the process rather than the creator of it.  The purpose of a painting, if I ever discern it, often takes me long after its completion to get a handle on, and is very seldom distillable into a single paragraph if it can be articulated in words at all.  At least words that I have access to.  I rather think that these are paintings of the memory or anticipation of feelings.  I suppose that people who respond to them must recognize the resonance of similar anticipations or memories.

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There is a great importance in successfully becoming human -- in coming to fully understand ourselves and others and God.  The process is difficult and filled with awkward discoveries and happy encounters, dreadful sorrow and unmitigated joy -- sometimes several at once.  The purpose of art is to facilitate this process, rather than simply decorate the journey or worse, distract us from it.  It reminds us of what we have forgotten, illuminates what we know, or teaches us unexpected things.  Through art we come to feel and understand and love more completely -- we become more human.  The artists that I admire, obscure, famous, or anonymous, have contributed to my humanity through their whimsy, their devotion, their tragedy, their bliss, or their quiescence.  I seek to be such an artist.

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As nearly as I can trace, my paintings emerge from living with people (and my dog) and from affection for the processes I use to make pictures.  Although my skills of observation and craft are good, there is a fundamental element which makes a picture succeed that is outside of my control.  It is a gift of grace every time it occurs and is always a surprise.  This element eludes me every time I try to control it.  When a painting succeeds, I have not created it, but rather have participated in it.

I paint because I love and because I love to paint.  The better I become at both, the more readily accessed and identified is this grace, and the better will be my contribution.

About Brian T. Kershisnik

By Brian Kershisnik

Brian T. Kershisnik, painter, was born the fourth and last son of excellent parents. Because of his father’s employment as a petroleum geologist, he grew up in Luanda Angola, Bangkok Thailand, Conroe Texas, and Islamabad Pakistan. He graduated from high school early, not because of sterling merit, but because the American Embassy in Islamabad Pakistan was burned and he was evacuated and the seniors graduated. After a year of college at the University of Utah searching in vain for vocation, he served for a time as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Denmark. He returned to the USA to study art at Brigham Young University, during which studies he received a grant to study in London for six months. After graduate studies in Austin Texas, he and his young family moved to Kanosh, a very small town in central Utah where he worked on paintings and his house for 16 years. He now lives in Provo, Utah, but continues to paint in his beautiful Kanosh studio.