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Brian
Kershisnik: Painting from Life
Editor’s
Note: Today Meridian celebrates the painting of Brian Kershisnik
with this excursion into his paintings, and his wife’s revealing
musings into life with an artist. A new book has just been published
displaying his moving work, which we will review next week.
If
you are already a Kershisnik fan you can find more information on
purchasing his work or the book by clicking here. If you are unacquainted,
you have something delicious ahead.
By Maurine Proctor
We first met
Brian Kershisnik at the World Congress of Families in Geneva, Switzerland.
His painting, Large Horse, Small Riders was the quintessential symbol
of the situation facing family in the world. A large horse, carrying
a small father, mother and two children, is swimming through a rising
river. The painting leaves you with a haunting question. Would the
family make it or would the water continue to rise and daunt their
chances? Yet the horse was strong and able. It was a picture of
the situation.
Large Horse, Small Riders
We sat next
to him for two days. He was at a table selling his pictures; we
were signing people up to receive information on family issues.
He was as distinctive personally. In a sea of strangers, we found
him remarkably familiar. His tenderness and gentleness struck a
chord.
So do his paintings.
Kershisnik,
who lives in the tiny town of Kanosh, Utah, paints images of people
that capture in a metaphoric stroke the vulnerability and exhilaration
of life.
Jacquelyn Mitchard wrote of him “Brian Kershisnik seems to
know instinctively: all that is important in human life involves
risk. On almost every canvas…there is motion; there is connection;
there is risk. Sweetness and bitterness, he once told me. Awkwardness
and tentative grace. A holy difficulty.
“To draw
juxtapositions must be a holy difficulty. And yet any of us who
live outside the cave of our own comfort experience just this every
day. From the first touch of one’s lips to the lips of a squalling
red infant until the moment we close our eyes in anticipation of
eternal rest or external life, we walk in measured danger—and
make the choice to walk boldly.
“If we
are saved, Brian seems to suggest, it is by our connections with
the earth, with God (for Brian is a religious man [LDS]) with those
we love, with those we support.”
Here is a sampling
of his work:
Dances
Through Disaster
“In Dances
Through Disaster, I cannot help but see my eighteen-year-old son
attempting to negotiate above the depths in a craft of his own making,
too small to accommodate his size even if he sat down and folded
himself into a fetal shape. The painted figure tries, half-clothed,
to stand, to hold himself upright. Nonetheless, he is not alone.
In the background is a humble shape; a dry house. It is a reminder,
to my unlearned eye at least, that parents can sometimes function
as no more than a dry harbor, an outgrown place, as the poet said,
where, when you have to there, they have to take you in.”
Jacquelyn Mitchard
Father
and Son Dancing
Father and Son
Dancing was inspired by a sorrowful image, a snapshot in time that
snagged Kershisnik’s imagination and drove him to paint, of
a friend lifting his disabled son from the bath. “We all knew
this boy’s life would not be long,” he said, “and
yet, it was a dance. It was a moment of joy within that sadness.”
For me, the painting that resulted was inspirational and redolent
of the difficulties of touch between fathers and sons as they grow.
Jacquelyn Mitchard
Lovers with
Banners
Kershisnik is
adept at capturing the nuances in relationships. I particularly
like his metaphors for marriage.
In Lovers with Banners, two meet and kiss on a field. Their banners,
different in color but flying the same direction, seem to me a symbol
of their distinctive natures joined in love with same wind blowing--for
this moment at least.
The Difficult
Part
Kershishnik
often portrays relationships as a dance. In The Difficult Part,
two are in an acrobatic dance that involves not only grace, but
great skill derived only from practice. The movement is both awkward
and beautiful as each bends well out of shape to accommodate the
other. Somehow, a successful life can absorb mistakes and ineptness,
and people should not expect immediately to be good at difficult
things.
Cat Gift
Kershisnik sees
not only the humanity, but the humor in our foibles. Mark Magleby
says , “There is something both ambitious and foolhardy in
offering a wrapped gift to a cat. In Cat Gift, the giver approaches
with eagerness and trepidation, leaning forward as he attempts to
bridge the gap between himself and the creature, which look the
other way, seemingly indifferent. We sense that this man is more
likely to receive a rebuke than gratitude for his offering, but
we wish him well. He is clearly a tender soul, an innocent for whom
we have instant empathy.”
The new book
Kershishnik, Painting from Life, is a visual delight, featuring
130 of his paintings and 28 images of the artist at work.
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Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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