In this episode, Johann König speaks with Australian-born, France-based painter Jordy Kerwick about his journey from failed entrepreneur to internationally exhibited artist—and what it means to build a practice entirely outside the traditional art world path.

Kerwick traces his unlikely entry into painting: a wife who banned band posters, a trip to France, and an obsession with the lives of Matisse, Modigliani, and Yves Klein that quickly turned into an obsession with making. With no formal training, he taught himself to paint horizontally on a kitchen bench, posting work on Instagram every night after long days managing gyms and a failing football college—until painting became the only thing left standing.

The conversation moves through the textures of his practice: the shift from still lifes to interiors, rugs, totems, and his new paintings being made for his upcoming show at KÖNIG GALERIE. Kerwick talks about thinking in palette before subject matter, about the philosophy embedded in his two-jawed totems—one mouth to love and nourish, one to take it all away—and about why his new exhibition, THIS TIME TOMORROW, takes its name from a Kinks song about an uncertain future glimpsed from within the present.

He also speaks candidly about the secondary market chaos that followed his early success, the realities of shipping costs reshaping the global art market, and why, for all the complications of living in rural southern France, he has no regrets and no shortage of ideas.

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Photo by Mathieu Douziech © Courtesy of the artist