Roy Kerswill 1925-2002 Biography scroll down to view works

1925-2002

Roy Kerswill born in Devon, England came to the United States via Canada when he sailed a cedar canoe in river waters from Canada to New Orleans, on a yearlong trip. This made him aware of pioneer experiences and heritage, the subject of most of his paintings. He has written a book titled "A Pictorial Story of the Oregon-California Trail," the result of six years of research and painting along the Oregon Trail. Roy has worked in both oil and watercolor and his subjects include western historical scenes and landscapes of the rugged and picturesque Teton Mountain Range in Wyoming. Roy was a precociously gifted young boy and he received a scholarship to the Bristol College of Art when only eleven years of age. From 1946-1948, Roy served three years in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. He then traveled to Canada and worked his way East to West as a laborer, an assistant engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, a cowboy for a Calgary rancher and on a highway survey crew in Whitehorse, Yukon. In 1950 Kerswill and a friend canoed down the Columbia River into the United States and up the Snake River to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, their journey making a story interesting to newspapers along the way. His destiny was sealed upon seeing and struggling through the incredible scenery. Kerswill lived in Jackson Hole for many years before moving to Polson, Montana, late in his life. Presidents’ Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, as well as Senator Barry Goldwater, Laurence Rockefeller and actors Burt Reynolds and Dick Van Dyke collected Kerswill’s paintings. Kerswill once described why he was an artist. "I paint with the same need as I eat. I paint because it is an adventure into something strange and beautiful. I paint because it is pleasurable; like smelling the rain, touching a child, loving a woman, singing to the wind or listening to the hushed roar of the wind in the forest. As I strive to reach and understand this thing, I become attuned or embed with something very beautiful, and it is this exciting sensation which drives me on."