Brian Kershisnik
Brian T. Kershisnik is a well-known artist and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, casually called the Mormon Church. Because his father worked as a petroleum geologist, Kershisnik grew up living abroad in several disparate locations: Luanda, Angola; Bangkok, Thailand; Conroe, Texas; and Islamabad, Pakistan. He attended the University of Utah for a year and then served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ in Denmark. He then studied art at Brigham Young University and completed a special six-month program in London. After doing graduate studies in Austin, Texas, he and his family moved to Kanosh, Utah. He now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Kershisnik's paintings include elements of devotion, enlightenment, and whimsy. He especially is able to capture the intuitive relationships that women share with each other, sometimes with males as quizzical on-lookers. Kershisnik comments on one elusive element, and that is grace. This element, since it is somewhat beyond his control, makes him a participant in his art, rather than a controller or manager. He has said,
- "Although my skills of observation and craft are good, there is a fundamental element that makes a picture succeed that is outside of my control. It is a gift of grace every time it occurs and is as surprising to me as it is to any viewer taken by an image. This element eludes me every time I try to control it. I firmly believe that when a painting succeeds, I have not created it, but rather participated in it." [1]
A new exhibit of Kershisnik's work, "The Difficult Part," is at Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art from August 16, 2024, through May 2025. The exhibition, "a mid-career retrospective, features over 100 artworks highlighting his exploration of love, grief, service, loss, inspiration, contemplation, and eternity."[2] The catalog for the exhibit notes that “He paints on average 80 to 100 works each year and thus far has created approximately 4,000 works.”
