“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 is a France-based Australian artist who began his painting career in 2016. He has quickly acquired global recognition for his bold, raw and unapologetic approach to palette and pattern, executing vivid, expressionistic and highly-stylized compositions. Domestic objects, predatory animals, and mythical beasts — taxidermy rugs ornamented with geometric markings, double headed king cobras, ferocious fanged tigers, and feather-maned unicorns — populate his figurative can- vases and create a contemporary folk- lore or fable that is playful, kinetic and arcane.
Known for his colorful, eclectic still life paintings, Kerwick’s latest body of work explores the fantastical elements and storied visions of the artist’s interior imagination where new and unknown terrains collide. Using a variety of materials, from oil, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, to oil stick and collage on paper, the artist’s “the more mistakes, the merrier” approach rejoices in the fortuitous relationships that arise between unexpected combinations of color, texture, and form.