The painter Jon Serl was an American maverick. His paintings, iconic and seemingly simple on the surface, have always maintained a mysterious power, a glimpse of darkness even when deceptively lighthearted. It is as if a double narrative is being represented; a social one on the surface and another, not so obvious, running like a shadow beneath the simplicity of his forms. This deeper layer is his own added personal history, a picture of a part of America that is no longer around.
Jon Serl was born Joseph Searles in 1894 in Oleans, New York, and spent much of his life intimately familiar with an America in transition between two world wars. His family was a traveling carny-cum-vaudeville family; desperately poor and traveling with his parents and sisters, Serl was never in one place long enough to put down any kind of serious roots. He grew up intimate with cruelty and transience; his parents were cold, self-involved in their desperate need to eke out a survival.
A traveling vaudeville group had a slightly unsavory overtone in those days; part theatre, part burlesque, part traveling bordello, the shows could range from the vulgar to the sublime. Serl was a character player from childhood; he spent half his time on stage in drag or in Native American outfits. He sometimes impersonated females, and his domineering father used to make him vomit to keep a thin girlish figure for these roles. He played Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin. He was painted gold and rolled out of carpets. Serl was no stranger to some of the more bizarre aspects of life. He witnessed a bloody abortion when he was nine years old. He played many roles in his life, from chuck-wagon chef in the Pacific Northwest to voice-over in Hollywood. He picked peaches and cherries. He made gardens. An American apricot somewhere is named after him.
His life as a painter, however, was certainly not a role. He painted from the early 40s till the day he died. Many of his paintings reflect experiences in life where he constantly questioned the ramifications of gender and expression of personal sexuality. He felt he painted for the salt of the earth. He painted to document and keep alive his many personal stories. He painted to keep his soul alive.