Edith Studio

Footprints in the snow a.k.a. Places to hide.” 1st slide: 2026. 2nd slide 2025. Digital drawing printed on aluminum.

Childhood is supposed to be fun, carefree, and filled with laughter, playfulness, mischief. We expect kids to be boisterous, daring, innocent.

Screw the adults who shatter that time in our lives.

My work is not always pretty. It’s not always happy. Sometimes it’s hard to look at because it’s too painful to remember; difficult to conceive of such horrible acts; Awkward to face those (mostly) men in our lives/community who commit these acts against children and rob them of their Joy.

We don’t want to believe it. We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to know about it. Because then we’d be… responsible?

Often times my work focuses on a child hero who reclaims her memories and chooses how to weave those memories into a new empowering narrative where victims become victors. This is my hope for all child survivors… that one day we fight the demons in our memories and remember the happy childhood we once had. Joy will live again.

Prints available from 18 x 18“ to 60 x 60“. Limited Edition of 18.
20% of profits are donated to causes that support victims of child sexual abuse. Dm me for pricing or to order.

Took some time off beginning of Oct to have some fun in the hospital...

Yeah, I'm totally fine. All good. Nothing too terrible. Just pi**ed I missed some beautiful weather and prime studio time...

Here are 3 quick little studies
I whipped up when I got out.

"Not the window seat" oil painted over top of a giclée print on stretched canvas . 14" x 12"

"Still not the window seat" oil painted over top of a giclée print on stretched canvas. 12" x 12"

"Go ahead... everyone else has" oil on stretched canvas. 12" x 12"

I asked myself, what would I do if I was no longer afraid.... so I jumped in and had some fun. We have to be prepared to lose a piece in order to save it.

Swipe to see a technique I've used on and off over the years... blocking in the darks. Unlike where many artists will block in the lights and sometimes the darks where they're following the form, here, I ignore the form --as I will bring it out later-- and let the darks merge from form to form and thru the interspace.

This piece is nowhere near finished, and it's super weird to share this at this early stage, however, I find the sharing of it an interesting exercise.🤔🤔🤔

This quick study and underpainting in oil on gessoed masonite board, 48”x48”, is about a very terrifying event that happened when our son was eight months old. We thought we were losing him due to an allergic reaction.

What made it so much harder was that a few weeks before I had broken my right leg and tore most of the ligaments in my left ankle. I couldn’t walk without crutches, and even then that was extremely difficult. And yet while my husband ran to get the car, I had to get our son down the stairs and to the front door. During that interminably long 5 minutes, he lost consciousness. I don’t think I have ever felt so helpless in my life.

I administered the EpiPen and 15 minutes later in the car, he came to and was okay by the time we got to the ER. That was 13 years ago. It feels like yesterday.

Through 5 or 6 different pieces I’ve been exploring this terrifying event, and in the broader sense, the helplessness, fragility and vulnerability of childhood, while at the same time celebrating children’s remarkable strength and resilience.

Above, I show the first rough-in for the piece and then some detail shots of his face, arm, my cast. There are a lot of obvious technical errors that I don’t want to rework until the oil has dried and some I’m not that concerned about, but I needed to step back and see where I wanna go with the piece as a whole. I might leave it where it is as just a study or I might decide to develop it further into a full painting.

There’s also a studio shot of another piece to the right that I’m working on of the same event where my husband runs to the car while holding our unconscious baby, while I struggle to get up on my crutches and get out the door.

Please like and share this post with a parent, curator, or gallerist with whom you feel this work might resonate. I would also love to hear about an event where you felt helpless as a parent.

Sketchbook study from 6 months ago. This is for an installation I’d like to do soon, i.e. when a gallery or gallerist or creator would like to help me co-create this show.😆

I am always working on a number of things at once, though usually not on more than two bodies of work but sometimes three. however, within one body of work, I may be working in different media.

So, I might be doing a painting and a bunch of drawings and even some sculptures, if you followed any of my fragmented memory/fractured past series there were drawings and glass sculptures and paintings all within the same style and the same theme.

This quick sketch here is a rough-out for an idea for a glass and bronze sculpture that would be approximately 4 feet deep, 2 feet wide, and 3 feet high. And that piece would be the maquette for a life-sized piece with the “forest of trees” towering at 13 feet.

Yesterday afternoon’s quick under sketch for a new work. Part of the Monsters of Montreal /Tyrant of Toronto series.

4ft x 4ft. Oil on gessoed board.

This piece is about a really terrifying time in our life when we almost lost our son due to an anaphylactic reaction . It’s about the helplessness that I felt and the vulnerability of our poor little 7-month old boy who collapsed unconscious in front of my eyes. Luckily, the EpiPen saved him.

I’m using this event as a metaphor of the vulnerability of children, of the need for us, adults, others, anyone to act, to intervene. Because tho’ children are unbelievably resilient and strong, they still need our help and guidance and protection.

And yes, as I said, this was terrifying and it was made even harder because I had broken my legs only weeks before, and I couldn’t move as fast as I needed to, and I was in denial about what was happening. But once my brain kicked in and I started to focus. I saved him and we rushed him to the hospital and he was OK.

My goal here is to focus on resilience, on Hope, on love.

It’s pretty rare for me to talk about a piece while I’m in the middle of it because though I’m very clear in what direction I wanna go I always allow for the possibility of many directions to unfold.

So yes, let’s see where it goes !

If you know of someone who experienced a traumatic event in their childhood, please share this post because hope will help get them through.
🇨🇦

At last, "It's On" is done! Woohoo! 95" x 47". RF pigment sticks, oil, mixed media on rag paper.

This is about girls fighting back, reclaiming voices and innocence stolen as young children. This is the story of reframing and reconstructing the narrative, of challenging all those who seek to exert power over those who are younger, smaller, weaker, powerless. This is the story where the weak rise up resilient and strong, saying no more. Saying to perpetrators: "It's On".

“I Do”. Oil and encaustic on stretched canvas. 5 ft x 5 ft. 1997. I created this piece to address the horrific and very real possible violence a woman/girl might face from her domestic partner. I included Canada alongside countries where the public stoning or killing or abuse of one’s “wife” (owned chattel) is accepted, because of the growing rates of femicide here in Canada.

But even in the face of danger and systemic inequality we women rise above and have the power to fight.

So, my tribute to women everywhere: to our strength, to our resilience, our determination, our ability to survive, no matter what this world has brought us or will bring us. We are wonderful, beautiful, creative, and brilliant. And yes, we are powerful. Our ability to love and forgive knows no bounds. We are protectors, fighters, nurturers, mothers, sisters, friends, aunties, and cousins.

And to everyone else, no matter who you are, never forget that We Made You.

Happy Women’s Day, my sisters. I respect, admire, and love you all. You, phenomenal females, both born and become, those with us and those that only live in our hearts, I am so grateful for all the gifts you have shared with me and our world. Thank you💝

“We not like them” version 2. Digital.
(C) Edith Kernerman 2024
Prints for sale. Country is not.

[email protected] to order right now.

$200 for 20x20” framed canvas print or brushed aluminum print. Ready to hang. Limited Edition

$50 for 20” x20” unframed satin poster print

Free shipping in Canada 🇨🇦