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Saints at Play Jon Serl Photographed by Gavin Ashworth
Jon Serl
Saints at Play Jon Serl Photographed by Gavin Ashworth
Saints at Play Jon Serl Photographed by Gavin Ashworth

Jon Serl

1894–1993
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BiographyJon Serl traveled the United States with his family’s vaudeville troupe. Throughout his whole life, he drew extensively on this experience and hard existence. He also carried on the chameleon-like roles that gays had to play in order to live their lives. His paintings—all done in his wet-on-wet fashion (i.e., paint applied upon paint that has not dried yet)—are filled with depictions of cross-dressers, living passionately in those times as a part of a subculture.

Serl had a sense of America that came from his hobo-like travels. He loved the small-town warmth of Mexican villages; he loved mountains. For him, nature provided a stage that was always grander than the small human dramas played upon it. Painting was a way of locating himself in the world despite his free-spirited and traveling lifestyle.

Adapted by Valérie Rousseau from “Jon Serl” by Randall Morris, The Hidden Art (New York: Skira Rizzoli/American Folk Art Museum, 2017), 158–163.