>> Jillian Player
Jeremy Herndl likes to remind himself of a quote by drawing master William Kentridge, “Resist the attempt to construct an argument.” Looking at Herndl’s work, one can see why this quote would be important. His large paintings, busy with thick strokes of oil paint, capture the fleeting moments of humanity and light as time passes. He paints plein air in areas where the landscape has been disturbed by human intervention. Some paintings capture the transition of the sun-cycle from morning to night, giving the viewer a broader experience of the landscape. There are scenes of Mason Street farm, Pacific Recycling, Trial Island, and many others around Victoria.
Jeremy and his family have traveled the world, following their roots and opportunities, to finally arrive on the west coast. Jeremy, originally from Vancouver, always dreamed of moving back to the west coast of BC. They now live in the heart of Fernwood. While being a busy parent and painting instructor at the Vancouver Island School of Art, Jeremy has recently spent three months in Gotland, Sweden. He was the recipient of the 2015 Brucebo Scholarship for fine arts which provides Canadian artists residencies in northern Europe on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea.
With the island rich in history, dating back to the Vikings, Jeremy was like a kid at a playground with places to paint and uninterrupted time. Jeremy is always interested in painting places with a deep sense of history, agency, and collective memory. One Gotland painting in particular speaks to this. It shows the scene from looking out onto the landscape from inside a cave entrance. In this cave, archeologists found evidence of humans dating back six thousand years. He painted the same view the ancient’s once saw.
Now that he is back from his residency in Europe, he is focusing his attention close to home: this neighbourhood and its incidental (and accidental) stories. Jeremy says, “I am interested in things that happen on the margins, where people aren’t expected to look and where things happen unintentionally.”
See Jeremy Herndl’s work on his website: jeremyherndl.com
