Kershisniked! Artist Brian Kershisnik's work is on display at Utah Museum of Fine Arts
To see his work — on display at the Utah Museum of Fine Art through July 1 — is to be, what I call "Kershisniked": It draws you up and in, stimulates your sight and mind, then sets you down comfortably, often with a chuckle or satisfied grin.
His talent and success have been the topic of myriad magazine and newspaper articles, and if you Google "Kershisnik," be prepared to spend several hours looking at a prodigious portfolio of images with the word "SOLD" nearby.
What you may not know is that Kershisnik is also one of those rare visual artists who can actually wax poetic while responding to a question: He can be cogent, pithy and gregarious.
Deseret Morning News: My favorite painting in the UMFA exhibit is "Woman with Infant Flying."
Brian Kershisnik: That's a big one, isn't it? That was painted for the show because they have these huge walls. I actually had intended for the bottom of it to be 10-to-15 feet off the ground but there were difficulties hanging it that high.
DMN: My favorite part of the painting is the baby pointing its finger.
DMN: Have you ever been tempted to treat the dark side in a painting? Perhaps a little Albert Pinkham-Ryder meets Joyce Carol Oates?
BK: I feel that I do. Take for example the "Rescue," the painting of the man being attacked by a lion, and the boy fighting him off with a shovel. However, even in a painting like that, where I feel like I'm dealing with kind of a dark subject, it's amazing to me how some kind of light always breaks through into it.
A Mogul miniature of a lion attack inspired that particular painting. In my version, when I drew the lion and man on the canvas, they were so large there wasn't any more room for another adult to help fight off the lion. In the initial drawing the guy fighting the lion was bent over so he would fit on the canvas. Well, that looked kind of silly so I just made him into a boy.
Then the narrative of the painting just sort of shifted into a painting of my father's lung cancer, and me being brave and attacking it but with completely the wrong tools. And here's where the light breaks through: In the experience with my father's death from lung cancer, I couldn't make the lion bad. I mean the lion is powerful and the lion is terrible, but symbolically the lion is not the enemy. Aside from my intentions, the painting became more about "who is actually doing the rescuing?"
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