About the Artist
Jennifer Kershaw is a representational painter working in oils, building the image up with glazes of colour, in the tradition of Dutch still life and Canadian painter, Mary Pratt.
She has always been inspired by the transformative power of light and enjoys exploring how it can transform the simple and everyday objects around us into something jewel-like and extraordinary. Light is transient and painting it is a way of hanging on to a moment that will drift and disappear. Painting light with transparent layers and linseed glazes is a slow process; a physical contemplation of mortality and the need to enjoy, savour, and celebrate what we have while we have it, because as a wise Beatle once said, “tomorrow never knows”.
She has always been inspired by the transformative power of light and enjoys exploring how it can transform the simple and everyday objects around us into something jewel-like and extraordinary. Light is transient and painting it is a way of hanging on to a moment that will drift and disappear. Painting light with transparent layers and linseed glazes is a slow process; a physical contemplation of mortality and the need to enjoy, savour, and celebrate what we have while we have it, because as a wise Beatle once said, “tomorrow never knows”.
Jen was born in Scarborough, Ontario, and then lived in Milton, Ontario after her father’s untimely passing in 1990. In 2004, she earned her B.A. Honours degree from the University of Guelph. There, in the paint spattered studios of Zavitz Hall, she began to specialize in painting under Monica Tap and had her revelatory collision with the work of Mary Pratt.
Her work is held in private collections in Canada and the United States.