I acknowledge that I live and work as a settler on Treaty 6 Territory, the traditional lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dene, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota Nations, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. I am grateful for the ongoing presence and stewardship of Indigenous communities.

I was born in 1960 in Fiske, Saskatchewan, Canada, to German-speaking Mennonite parents. My ancestors were farmers, originally from the Zaporizhia region of present-day Ukraine, who arrived in 1923 and established themselves on this land.

As a teenager, I received early formal training in life drawing at the Banff Centre, and later earned a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal and an MFA from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. I currently live and work in Saskatoon.

My artwork first came to public attention through portraiture, and later, in the mid-1990s, with expansive wall drawings. These site-specific works, composed of numerical sequences in a variety of coloured fonts, explored themes of seasonal time and impermanence.

This diaristic approach has evolved considerably since then, and in early 2008 I began a personal challenge to complete one painting each month. Structured around the yearly calendar, the intention was to reimagine traditional forms of record-keeping. Over the years, however, this working method has expanded to include photography, multiple paintings, and works on paper. Each piece is created in response to a specific month.

This production has since taken on a contemplative rhythm, marking time through close attention to natural life cycles and the practice of artistic documentation. In the years that followed, my observations of planetary change began to shape this process. I have come to see the labour of art-making as part of a broader public awareness that connects agricultural traditions with the seasonal patterns studied in phenology.

Inscribed by a sense of place and craft, my interests are frequently found in this distinctive engagement with time, where meaning can surface through the subtle turns of unconscious collective memory.

EDUCATION

BFA Concordia University

MFA University of British Columbia

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2024     330g, Timeline, Saskatoon, SK

2006     69 Pender, Rm. sixty-nine, Vancouver, BC 

2001     Tracey Lawrence Gallery, Roman Portraits, Vancouver, BC 

1997      Or Gallery, Rm. 112, Vancouver, BC 

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 

2021     Griffin Art Projects, Teeth, Loan and Trust Company, Consolidated: The Trylowsky Collection, North Vancouver, BC

2011     Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Faces, Vancouver, BC 

2006     Stride Gallery, Crazy Eights, Calgary, AB

2003     Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Belkin Invitational, Vancouver, BC

2000     Center Saiyde Bronfman Centre & Or Gallery, Hotel Motel (with Trevor Gould), Montreal, Quebec

Trylowsky Gallery, New Work: Jerry Allen, Ron Terada, Vancouver, BC

Tracey Lawrence Gallery, Head Shots, Vancouver, BC 

1999     Presentation House Gallery, Return of the Corpse, Vancouver, BC

1997     Or Gallery, It was said, Vancouver, BC

AWARDS 

British Columbia Arts Council Scholarship Award, University of British Columbia, 

BC Binning Drawing Fellowship 

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS 

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC 

VGH and UBC Foundation Art Collection, Vancouver. BC

Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC

The Trylowsky Collection, Vancouver, BC

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

2011     Watson, Anne, Faces to Stretch the mind at the Belkin, Vancouver Observer, February, Watson, Scott, Faces: Works from the Permanent Collection, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery catalogue 

2003     Richmond, Cindy, Jerry Allen, Western Living Magazine, September

2001     Scott, Michael, Jerry Allen, The Vancouver Sun, May 10 

2000     Canyon, Brice ed., Hotel Motel, Live at the End of the Century, Visible Art Society 

1998      Embry, Kerry ed., Jerry Allen: Twelve People, Front Magazine, Vol. IX, #7, December

Brayshaw, Christopher, Painting’s usefulness on display, The Courier, November 14

ARTIST WRITING

Ian Wallace, September 28, 2009, Artforum.com

Silke Otto-Knapp, August 17, 2009, Artforum.com

Science Fiction 01, July 10, 2009, Artforum.com

PRESS