Kerri Quirk is an outsider artist with an exceptional gift for color, design, and pattern. She works primarily in the acrylic medium, often on very large canvases. Kerri is also an accomplished weaver.

Kerri has been a working artist since 1988 and had very humble beginnings like most artists, working in a shared studio space in Mansfield, Connecticut. She is a person with autism who is hearing impaired and uses sign language as a means to communicate. Area artists and the non-profit agency Horizons support Kerri to express her unique vision. Currently Kerri paints daily in her studio along with Tom Menard, a self-taught artist who has been painting since 1968.

Kerri is truly an Outsider Artist, as her work is not influenced by the conventions of the art world but instead seems at times to spring or gush out from her soul. Often it appears that Kerri feels the need to harness a specific image or make some exotic sense of the color she sees in the world around her.

At times she works very quickly with dots and dashes that create canvasses that seem to shimmer. During one period, in the late 90’s, Kerri produced art very slowly adding layer after layer of color creating very rich, dense paintings.

Friends and family have tried to influence Kerri’s choice of subject or medium, and their efforts are rebuffed. She selects the subjects that interest her and will often create extensive bodies of work related to the same subject. Once Kerri cleverly disposed of colored pencils in her studio as a way to let her supporters know she was finished with that medium.

Kerri's paintings have been exhibited at art exhibitions and juried shows throughout Connecticut as well as Boston, MA, New York, and Washington D.C. The recipient of numerous awards, she was chosen by the Connecticut Very Special Arts Council to present one of her paintings to Senator Christopher J. Dodd. Kerri is currently a member of the Northeast Connecticut Art Guild.

In May of 2010 Kerri: and Art Studio and Gallery opened at 861 Main Street in Willimantic. Here one can truly feel  the power and magic of Kerri’s work.