Brian Kershisnik on what drives his art, which features on this series of JUNO covers...
I make art because I am searching for things; I am looking for something. Looking teaches me and teases thinking out of me. It precipitates internal and external conversations that I believe do me good. 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 workaday holiness. They are often getting it wrong, they are misunderstood, but they loved and lovely too. They are a little heavy-footed in their dancing, a little dishevelled in their 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 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, but I find them often enough to at least keep me at it, and each occurrence has aspects that are unique and unrepeatable.
If my work is to ever be important, it will be because what I find 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. I have found 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.
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Find more of Brian Kershisnik’s work at kershisnik.com
Our series of art covers will be available soon as a bundle – watch this space!
