Jerstin Crosby is an American artist raised in the south and based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Crosby currently makes paintings and objects assembled from layers of hand-cut and laser-cut segments, realized in saturated tones. He has used digital tools from early in his practice, starting with the emergence of programs like Microsoft Paint, which has influenced his aesthetic in its colorful simplicity. This reliance on software allows for executions that push beyond painterly instincts using a limited vocabulary of elements that form figurative motifs, serving as character studies, “current moods”, and signifiers of the human condition.
Architectural references and geometric grids have found their way into the work. The figures are being defined and distorted by those environments. There is a degree of real and illusionistic depth offset by Crosby’s use of hard-edge, flat use of color. The elements and their surroundings define each other through cutouts in the wooded panels. Sometimes the parts are removed to reveal the wall behind it, while other times you see still more layers building on each other.
Crosby’s work extends beyond the studio into outdoor projects and was commissioned to create a permanent outdoor installation in downtown Raleigh, NC. He has exhibited at Ada Gallery, Nasher Museum of Art, Speed Art Museum, Queens Museum, Cell Projects, Exit Art, the Mattress Factory, LUMP, and Kallio Kunsthalle Taidehalli in Helsinki. His exhibitions have been written about in publications such as Art Forum. Art Papers, and NPR Weekend Edition. He received an MFA from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.