Jerry Berneche

Small Town No. 4

c. 1995

Jerry Berneche (1932 - 2016) was a painter and draftsman of representational scenes and portraits featuring extraordinary color work and extremely detailed mark-making. Locally in his home state of Missouri, he is equally well-known as an educator of generations of young artists - a professor at the Art Department of the University of Missouri for over 40 years. Among the many series of his long career are portrait subjects treated with great tenderness, the time-consuming accumulated marks that form their features seemingly an act of reverence. In his depictions of companion animals we see an understanding of the relationships between pets and their people underpinning his skilled control of drawing media.