Sky of Promise, Sky of Hope 2008 40x30 Huge

Year2008

Hand SignedUpper Right on Verso 

Condition Excellent 

Not FramedGallery Wrapped. Does not need framing. Allows Col 

Purchased fromArtist 2008 

Provenance / HistoryEd Kerns is an American painter and educator. He studied with Grace Hartigan, the highly regarded American Abstract Expressionist. Through his friendship with Hartigan, Kerns came to know and work for many artists of the New York School, including Willem de Kooning, James Brooks, Philip Guston, Clyfford Still, and Sam Francis. Kerns’ career in New York had a meteoric trajectory. In 1972, his first exhibition at the Sachs Gallery on 57th Street in Manhattan garnered high critical praise. The New York Times, The Village Voice, Arts Magazine, ArtForum , and Artnews were among the numerous publications to praise his work. Kerns lived and exhibited in Manhattan for 12 years before coming to Lafayette College to chair and build the modern era Art Department. In 1987, Kerns was awarded the Eugene and Mildred Clapp Professorship of Art. He became the youngest person to hold an endowed chair in the College’s history. Kerns has enjoyed a long association with the New York galleries of A.M. Sachs, Rosa Esman, Florence Lynch, and Howard Scott. His career has spanned a prolific 45 years. Kerns’ work has been shown in over 38 solo exhibitions and 130 group shows in New York, Paris, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Chicago, Denver, Rome, Madrid, Osaka, Munich, and Mexico City. In addition to painting and production of digital art, Kerns routinely collaborates with neuroscientists, biologists, computer scientists, and engineers. He is part of a growing group of artists and academics who embrace the emergent possibilities of consilience forming a broad partnership to explore the over-arching unity of knowledge. The visual ideas found in The Octopus Meditations have been developed from conversations with biologists, neuroscientists, and other artists interested in the compelling revelations made possible by process-driven visual-modeling and direct observation, the root of both art and science. To ask questions about consciousness especially in the context of a magnificent creature with an integrated neural network of nine brains places imagination and creativity at the forefront of progress in scientific and artistic endeavor. 

Story / Additional InfoUsing Abstract Expressionist techniques the painting was done as a meditation on celestial structure and the imagery it suggests. A Sky map of plasticity of color similar to Hans Hoffman's color theories.

This work was shown with Anthony Seraphin's Gallery in Philadelphia and at Florence lynch's gallery in Manhattan. 

Certificate of AuthenticityArt Brokerage 

Additional InformationMotivated 

LID155194

Ed Kerns - United States

Art Brokerage: Ed Kerns American Abstract Expressionist Artist: b. 1945. Ed Kerns (February 22, 1945) is an American abstract artist and educator. Kerns studied with the noted Abstract-Expressionist painter, Grace Hartigan and through the elder artist came to know and work with many artists of that generation including, Phillip Guston, Willem de Kooning, James Brooks, Ernest Briggs, Richard Diebenkorn and Sam Francis. Born in 1945 in Richmond, Virginia, Kerns started painting at a young age. He attended the Richmond Professional Institute, receiving his BFA in 1967. He went on to the Maryland Institute, where he studied with painter Grace Hartigan. Here, Kerns received the Hoffberger Fellowship and graduated with an MFA in 1969. Kerns first gained exposure in 1972, when he was commissioned by art collector Larry Aldrich to paint 100 paintings over the course of the year as gifts.That same year, Kerns had his first solo art show at the AM Sachs Gallery in New York. Over the course of the 1970s and 80s, Kerns formed a close partnership with the Rosa Esman Gallery and exhibited ten solo shows there. Of his work in the late 1970s and early 80s, gallery coordinator Judith Stein says, "He works slowly, creating no more than ten large paintings a year. His media are acrylic, sand, and thread, the last used to stitch together sections of canvas. Often plywood or upsom board is used as support." Listings wanted.