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Jon Serl
1894 –1993
Jon Serl took up painting after many years as a farmhand, chef, and performer on the vaudeville stage. He always loved an audience, and to the end of his long life (he died at 99) he enjoyed the adulation of the art world and all those friends who came to listen to his fanciful tales.
Serl’s history is certainly apparent in his work, much of which leaps from the surface to catch the viewer’s eye. His world is filled with sideshow figures and contortionists, but his past as a vaudevillian does not explain the mystical, almost archetypical, dimension of these paintings. Lively and bold, they are infused with a sense of narrative drama, as if the artist’s overriding goal were to communicate. But despite this apparent openness, and despite the accessibility of his imagery — mountain climbers, a family out for a stroll — the power of his paintings lies in their ability to suggest what is inaccessible.
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