Artist

Jon Serl

born Olean, NY 1894-died Lake Elsinore, CA 1993
Media - portrait_image_113660.jpg - 90355
Also known as
  • Joe Seals
  • Joseph Searles
  • Jerry Palmer
  • Ned Palmer
Born
Olean, New York, United States
Died
Lake Elsinore, California, United States
Biography

According to Jon Serl, this painting began one afternoon with the drawing of a neighborhood boy who interrupted Serl's painting. Serl told the boy to retrieve a piece of scrap board and work on his own creation, instructing him to "put the head all the way at the top and put the feet at the bottom." When he saw the initial drawing, Serl was inspired to work on it himself, to "make it live." The result is a composition characteristic of Serl's art that interweaves daily realities with his profoundly subjective view of contemporary life.

As a child, Serl performed in his family's traveling vaudeville show, and this experience provided an essential element of his mature painting style. When Serl began painting inearnest after World War II, his earliest compositions were landscapes. By the mid to late 1950s, Serl's vision had turned toward expressionist figurative studies that continue to command his attention. His portrayals of human interaction are usually stagelike, achieving their mysterious qualities by a masterful use of color. "You don't see my paintings," Serl insists, "you feel them."

Lynda Roscoe Hartigan Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990)

Works by this artist (8 items)

Jesus Barraza, La Chicana, 2006, screenprint, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Gilberto Cárdenas and Dolores García, 2019.51.7, © 2006, Jesus Barraza
La Chicana
Date2006
screenprint
Not on view
Dignidad Rebelde, Jesus Barraza, Nancypili Hernandez, Indian Land, 2010, screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Samuel and Blanche Koffler Acquisition Fund, 2020.39.7, © 2010, Nancy Hernandez and Jesus Barraza
Indian Land
Not on view
Dignidad Rebelde, Jesus Barraza, I Am Alex Nieto and My Life Matters, 2014, screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Samuel and Blanche Koffler Acquisition Fund, 2020.39.4, © 2014, Jesus Barraza
I Am Alex Nieto and My Life Matters
Date2014
screenprint on paper
Not on view

Exhibitions

Media - 1970.353.1-.116 - SAAM-1970.353.1-.116_9 - 127238
Galleries for Folk and Self-Taught Art
October 21, 2016January 31, 2030
SAAM’s collection of folk and self-taught art represents the powerful vision of America’s untrained and vernacular artists.
Media - 2016.38.43R-V - SAAM-2016.38.43R-V_2 - 126225
We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection
July 1, 2022March 26, 2023
We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, their creativity and

Related Books

Cover for the catalogue "We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection"
We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection
We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, their creativity and bold self-definition became major forces in American art. The exhibition features recent gifts to the museum from two generations of collectors, Margaret Z. Robson and her son Douglas O. Robson, and will be on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum July 1, 2022 through March 26, 2023.