Sherry Kerlin’s paintings and drawings are dedicated to her unending search for the narratives that lie beneath what appears to be the immutable concrete surface of reality. In her work she attempts to achieve the seemingly impossible and contradictory task of painting the reconciliation between that which is seen and that which is intuited, after having given up trying to know the one exact "truth" and discovering the pleasure of the mystery of contradiction.
Kerlin paints in a diffused, soft lyrical style that is meant to mimic the transitory nature of an object or a figure. Many of the paintings are done in black and white in an attempt to bend reality to another perceptual level: the level of pure illustration and narrative. Each painting is usually confined to a focus on one or two objects in order to more fully explore their unique worlds. The scale of the work is small to create a sense of intimacy. Her images lie in a liminal realm and have an element of mystery to them. The titles of her work are very important, they illuminate the meaning of each work, and they support her sense of narrative – the soul of her work.
Sherry Kerlin is from Oklahoma, and now lives and works in New York City. She attended the Chicago Art Institute and completed her BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute, in Kansas City. Kerlin has been exhibiting her work since 1981 in New York and throughout the United States. She received a Grant in 1995 from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 1992 she received a residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.