Jon Serl The Mutability of Being

Jon Serl (1894-1993) was a self-taught artist who lived in a ramshackle 25-room house he built in the California desert. He fed the birds and raised his own food, and created paintings that are compelling, enigmatic, and forceful: re-redolent of days and nights fighting the demons of the past and the harassments of the present, but also of the joy of color and the tension that releasing his stories in paint assuaged. Although Searle did not begin making art until late in life, he became consumed by it. His head was absorbed by his work 24/7 and he did not stop painting until his death. His visual narratives resonate with a personal passion that evokes modernist modes of Symbolist depth, Surrealist fantasy, and Expressionist abstractions. Bold brushwork, a concentrated color palette, and an animated intermingling of the physical with the transcendent are eloquently important features of his work. Unapologetic and unforgettable, the paintings of John's Serl take us to a place that is both external and internal, the place where art should be.