Edgar Jerins

Edgar Jerins was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1958. His formal training began at the age of fourteen. At 18, Edgar received a full scholarship from the Scholastic Art Awards to attend Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Edgar won numerous awards before graduating from the Academy in 1980. Also in that year he was awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. With the grant Edgar moved to Los Angeles were he began his portrait career. “I have always felt part of the long tradition of realistic painting. My art originates from an emotional rather than an intellectual perspective. I find the figure as challenging as it is beautiful and through it I can create the pictorial and emotional world I want.” Edgar returned to the East Coast and continued to participate in group shows, winning many awards, including the Caroline Gibbon Granger Memorial Award for Painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Portrait commissions have taken Jerins to Europe and all over the U.S., and have gained him many favorable critics, “Edgar Jerins oil portrait achieves an unusually successful union of skillful technique and emotional impact. The nude figure, lovingly rendered in convincing detail, is an enigmatic presence whose half-closed eyes suggest a wide spectrum of thoughts and feelings beneath her exterior calm. Too often, such studies are facile but lifeless; in this case, the synthesis of representation and expression is impressive.” Jerins balances his time between portraits, nudes, and landscapes, but his major focus has always been on the figure. Jerins is a member of the Copley Society in Boston, and is an active member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.