Jonny Kemp
Portrait Artist
In 2024, the Crystal Palace Artists’ Open House launched the Emerging Artists Initiative - a programme supporting the next generation of creative talent, a platform for those actively studying (either formally or self-led) for a career in the creative arts. Each selected artist had their application fee waved, materials and framing sponsored and a space provided by a host venue to show their work over both weekends of the open house. In addition, they received an hour’s mentoring, delivered by a professional artist, and the promise of an exhibition in 2025 with charity partner Packed Lunch.
Jonny Kemp was one of the selected artists for the CPAOH Emerging Artists Initiative 2024.
Jonny lives in South East London. Graduating with BA in English in 2011, he worked as an English teacher until July 2023, leaving to pursue a new career as an artist.
Largely self-taught, he managed to take advantage of more time during lockdown to hone his craft. From there, he started to publicise his work online and at local art markets and fairs.
Alike to great literature, he thinks we should be able to see ourselves in painting and drawing. We might not like what we see, but it should be recognisable. For Jonny, the best art casts a sardonic sideways glance at the overlooked banalities of life and asks, “what makes us accept the way things are?”
More recently, he has depicted changemakers fighting for an optimistic, fairer alternative, whose work is often vilified or overlooked. Exploring transcription, such as Renaissance depictions of religious figures, allows him to imbue his subjects with the same symbolism and veneration for people who labour and suffer for their cause.
He has explored the importance of community through his South Drawood exhibition, celebrating the people of South Norwood, London, his local area. These were drawn in his distinctive style of fine liner pen.
In 2023, he was a contestant on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, drawing the BAFTA-winning actor Lenny Rush.
Jonny is now studying for an MA in Fine Art at City and Guilds London School of Art.
AWARDS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
Lady Hamlyn Award, from the Chelsea Art Society, 2024
West Design Award, TALP Open, 2024
Art Academy London Trustee Foundation Prize, 2024
Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year contestant, 2023
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
CroCry, Free The Gallery, Crystal Palace, July 2024
South Drawood, Stanley Arts, July – August 2022
Copper Beech Café, Dulwich, March 2024
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Guildford House Open, November 24 – March 2025
Skulls and Bones, Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield, August 2024
TALP Open, Patchings Art Centre, Nottingham, August 2024
New Beginnings, Badger in the Wall Gallery, Clapham (Yorkshire), June 2024
Eos, The Old Lock Up Gallery, Derbyshire, June 2024
Exhibit 12, West Norwood Picturehouse, September 2023 – January 2024
Croydon Art Society Summer Show, July 2023
Croydon Art Space Summer Exhibition, June-August 2023
‘Unmasked’ at the Royal College of Nursing, April 2023 onwards
Autumn Exhibition, D31 Gallery, Doncaster, Autumn 2022
