Jordy Kerwick Australian, b. 1982
“Raw. Worn. Beaten, but loved. Life, stripped bare. Amid the chaos of family life lies a feeling of safety and comfort that I try to replicate in my work. Drawing on my collection of imagery of cultural markings and people, places and things, I like to explore beauty in its most organic and real state; stripping back the layers to reveal a subject in its most truthful state.” – Jordy Kerwick
Jordy Kerwick (b. 1982, Melbourne, Australia) is a self-taught artist who lives and works in France. Kerwick’s dense impasto brushstrokes flatten the perception of space while his thick application of paint offers dimension and texture. He explores the relationship between thick patches of color and form while incorporating recurring elements of iconography such as contours of palm trees and anchors as a means of fusing painting and sketching. These intuitive and enticingly tactile marks celebrate artists’ role of investigating the inherent potential of his chosen media of oil paint.
Kerwick has exhibited in Sydney, New York, San Francisco, LA, Connecticut, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Cologne, Hamburg and Tokyo.
But just a glance at his work is enough to see why he is in such hot demand. Kerwick straddles the space between still-life, abstraction and landscape with intuitive ease. A naive approach to mark-making is balanced by, and contrasted against, a deep understanding of colour, construction and composition which is undoubtedly inspired by the Modernist masters.
Although his larger works are essentially abstract, there is still an implication of the domestic, provided by both his compositions which seem to reference tables, rugs, tv’s or backyards; and his weathered, lived-in surfaces.
His smaller works are often more literal still-lifes, their intimacy enhanced by painted-on borders, densly collaged surfaces, and the strategic placement of books, used both as a clever compositional device and as a reference to Kerwick's cultural influences, be it art, music or literature.
