Page created by: Robert M. Kershner, M.D., M.S., F.A.C.S.

C J Kershner-A Man and his Art

C. J. Kershner was born in Burlington, Vermont on April 17, 1951. He died in Boston, on November 6, 2015. He was 64.

He was an artist from a very early age. In school, he excelled at everything creative; writing, poetry, drawing, painting, and music. Self-taught in most disciplines, he explored a variety of media and was continually challenging the conventional, while shaping his own style. In his early career, he drew and painted portraits.

He graduated New York University, where he majored in psychology and minored in art. It was there that his creative talents began to emerge and evolve and where he studied under the internationally acclaimed abstract impressionist, Ilya Bolotovsky, who would become a major influence on his painting for the rest of his life.

After graduation, he worked as a graphic artist and became the marketing guru for a number of corporations in New York City, including Combustion Equipment Associates, among others. Tiring of New York, he travelled and eventually lived for a short period in Paris, returning many times thereafter. It was in France that he walked the paths of the great impressionists, Renoir, Monet, Degas and Van Gogh. It had a profound impact on his art.

After returning to the United States, he moved to South Florida where he was a regular contributor to the Palm Beach Post. While on an assignment to San Francisco to cover the World Series of 1989, he got caught in Candlestick Park during the great earthquake and ended up writing an award-winning article about his first person experience. He provided marketing services to a number of clients, as a copywriter and a graphic artist, including Qwest and Comcast, the former offering him a job at their corporate offices in Denver.

His move to Denver inspired him. He loved the clear air and blue skies and once again began painting portraits. After Qwest became AT&T, his corporate responsibilities diminished and he began to devote his time to painting, primarily acrylic on canvas, showing his work in various museums and galleries. His painting and writing became increasingly taxing on him physically and it was at this time that he was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. The high altitude and mobility issues forced his move back east where he purchased an Artist’s Loft in the emerging South End (SOWA) arts district of Boston. Despite progressive deterioration in his physical energy and the development of a hand tremor, he continued to paint, including an abstract three panel commissioned piece (each panel measuring 6 x 8 feet). In Boston, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and was placed on medication, which provided him with brief moments of mobility. He painted right up to the last days of his life, despite his constant disability, which necessitated him being homebound and often unable to move.

To try and sum up the life of a talented and gifted individual in mere words would be an injustice to him. C. J. was always humble, despite his great talent, and never accepted the monetary gain that his work could have provided, choosing instead to live modestly, earning enough to meet his needs, but no more. Surrounded by his art, writings, books, baseball memorabilia, music and poetry, he never complained about his medical condition. His physical limitations became so severe that at times he could not stand, let alone walk, and he became homebound. When his energy level would allow, he channeled his pain into his art. Always envisioning new artistic endeavors, even when his body would not cooperate, he maintained his wit, creative intelligence and humor to the end. He lived as he died, surrounded and immersed in the creative world that was his life and his love.

The following pages sample some of his art. I have divided it into the different periods of his life, the early years, the commercial art period, the portraits, and the abstract impressionism that would become his signature art form.

This world is less today with the lost of a wonderful soul.

with love, Robert M. Kershner, his youngest brother

C. J. was a student of the arts from poetry to painting. One of his favorites, was Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, a 19th Century French writer and poet whose translated words he quoted below:

“Do not wonder then if my mind,
Secretly rocked by the sound of a bell,
Loves its mystic voice that is faithful forever.
And you, sacred speaker of human sadness,
Which the earth invented to call out its sorrows with beauty,
Sing! The sound of broken hearts is still beautiful,
Let your moaning give a spirit to the stone,
Tears to dry eyes, a sign to prayer,
A melody to carry throughout eternity.
With the joyful sound of a lock falling away,
On the free threshold of an imprisoned soul.”