Jeff Kern was born and raised in Hampden, graduated from Minnechaug High in 1973, and then from UMass, where he

earned a fine arts degree. He has been represented by Michelson Gallery in Northampton since 1991 and has been a full time painter since then. Between about 2008 and 2012 he was hired by Canson Products to do demonstration workshops for oil paint and pastel in Mass., Conn. and New York State. Notable awards include the Robb Sagendorff Award from the Copley Society in Boston, and the standing of Copley Master. The winning painting was featured in Yankee Magazine. Also an Honor Award in oil painting from the Academic Artists Association, and most recently, an honorable mention from the Art Renewal Center  in it's salon for 2021. His paintings hang in personal and corporate collections around New England. He currently teaches pastel workshops for the George Walter Vincent Smith Museum in Springfield, Mass, as well as offering private lessons.

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His detailed, meticulous approach to representational realism was developed in the face of an art world obsessed with casual and even arbitrary description. His goal is to use paint to discover and develop hidden aspects of the familiar, to present the beauty within the forms and structures in the glorious physical world that we all inhabit. He feels that painting need not be fast or casual to reflect the truths of ephemeral existence. Rather, he believes that conscientious and thoughtful depictions of the physical realm can reach a level of artistic expression in which the forms feel palpable. This reverence for the beauty of the world is what he hopes will inspire his paintings and resonate with viewers. This is the level of emotion that he hopes to share.