Stephen Kerner’s world

At one point, he was invited to submit work for a Whitney Biennial, but the subject was political art. “They asked me to write on the painting, and it felt so unnatural. I didn’t do it.”

While Kerner was living at the Chelsea, Coleman brought Nigerian artist Chief Z. O. Oloruntoba to the U.S., where he took up residence at the hotel. “I watched him paint,” says Kerner. “He’d sketch figures, and some of his wives would color them in. I was so engrossed and sensed his work as charged with spiritual energy, surrounded by beings. He made masks and faces, and I watched how he put things together.”

Later, Kerner painted in Mexico, and he helped build schools on a Lakota Reservation in South Dakota. The influence of ancient cultures shows up in his paintings, which often feature animal-headed figures and other iconic imagery. His work process also hearkens back to the spiritual energy of those encounters.

After placing up to 20 layers of paint on a canvas and applying chemicals that give the work a “distressed”, aged look, he will “stand back and throw white paint over the painting. Images start to appear, and a spirit emerges — for instance, the head on a totem — and then I’ll see the whole canvas. The painting informs me, I’m not informing the painting.”

The excavation process involves burning away sections of the built-up layers with a high-pressure stream of hot water. He can vary the range of focus, from a pinpoint setting to a wide brush. “It’s a delicate process,” he says. “If you go too far, you lose the image.” The result is a complex, textured, three-dimensional surface with a translucent quality.

“You need one tiny accident,” he adds. “Then you magnify that to be the whole painting.”

For a period in the seventies, Kerner rented three floors of an industrial loft building on 18th Street for $125 a month. One floor was for music, with two sets of drums and an assortment of basses. He lived on another floor, and used the third as a painting studio. He worked on 40-foot paintings on the roof, lowering them by ropes over the side of the building when they were finished.

Submitting such huge works to museums was problematic. Slides did not convey the required amount of detail to appreciate the paintings. He and another artist bought a $40,000 press to produce 30-inch by 24-inch archival prints to show to museums. “It was the very beginning of archival printing,” says Kerner. “There were only three of those machines in America. It was always breaking down, and we had to learn how to service it ourselves.”

Success came early and persisted. Kerner and his friend, videographer Harry Smith, both won grants the same year from the National Endowment for the Arts. Hultsberg’s advice on documentation came in handy, as museum credits built up. Kerner was invited to show in Belgrade when the Russian satellite countries opened up in 1998. Galleries commissioned realistic paintings and sometimes sold all the work he gave them. Examples of those pictures hang in his home, meticulously accurate, graceful landscapes and portraits, in startling contrast to the rough, totemic work he is best known for.

Perhaps his biggest coup came when a countess, who lives in Rhinebeck and owns 900 acres of property along the Hudson, bought two of his paintings. “She took down some Motherwells to put my paintings up,” remembers Kerner. “It was so flattering.”

To see examples of Stephen Kerner’s work, or for information on Stone River Archival Printers, visit https://www.stonerivergiclee.com.