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A Decorative Arts Master With a Police Record
A Decorative Arts Master With a Police Record
By Leonard Shapiro
Growing up on Long Island in the 1970s and the son of a New York City fireman, John Kiernan had a mostly idyllic childhood, even if his parents strictly limited the minuscule amount of time he and his four siblings were allowed to watch television.
“We were either outside playing or inside resting,” he recently recalled. “The best way to entertain myself was drawing, and I started doing that when I was five years old.”
And he’s never stopped.
Kiernan, 61, is a multi-talented artist and founder and owner of Blue Line Studios LLC now based in Winchester and specializing in the decorative arts. He’s incredibly versatile in utilizing virtually any medium and his work ranges from spectacular indoor Trompe’ Loeil murals, gorgeous paintings, posters and so much more. He also does kitchen makeovers and decorative finishes that include metallic and venetian plaster.
His resume is equally diverse. He earned a degree in advertising art and design at Long Island’s Farmingdale State University and eventually spent the early 1980s as an art director for two New York advertising firms, where he worked on campaigns for Burger King and Avis Car Rental, among many others.
Then came a major U-turn. Because of his father’s dedication to public safety, he had always been fascinated with law enforcement, and he decided to join the police force in Southhampton Village, near the tip of Long Island. He liked the stability, the benefits, the pension possibilities, and in 1988 he moved to Virginia and joined the Fairfax County Police Department, where he stayed for 13 years.
“I had heard good things about it, and they were hiring a lot of cops from New York and Pennsylvania and you could max out on the overtime,” he said, adding that he also kept up with his artwork on the side by contributing law enforcement-themed work to various police organizations.
The last few years he was part of the Fairfax County’s SWAT Team, but his artist’s appetite was not totally satiated, and he began exploring other creative opportunities.
“I went out to the Home Show near Dulles Airport to see if I could get some work as a part-time artist,” Kiernan said. “I met a woman there who wanted me to paint some cabinets in her kitchen. Then I would pick up other jobs here and there, but the only way people would take my work seriously was if I did it full time.”
And so he did, leaving the force to take a job with a McLean-based decorative arts company. The firm matched his police salary and paid him to apply his art to the faux finishing profession, wood graining and marbling, among many other skills he developed. Kiernan said he gave himself a year to see if this sort of work was the right fit for him, and clearly it checked all the proper boxes and “I never looked back.”
In 2002, he opened his own business, originally based in Warrenton before moving it to Winchester in 2020. He’s mostly a one-man operation, “but when I need help on a project, I have other artists I can call on.”
From 2017 to 2021, he also worked with Golden Rule Builders in Catlett, a custom home builder. He created high end kitchens and bathrooms and even designed several new homes. Most of the remodeling included some decorative painting and mural work, as well.
Among his favorite current clients are the Washington Capitals. He’s designed four different posters for them, including a recently completed work on a life-sized poster of Capitals’ star Alexander Ovetchkin. He expects that will be a big seller now that “The Great Eight” has set the National Hockey League’s all-time record for most goals scored.
Kiernan also continues to do work using law enforcement themes to help raise funds for various police organizations. He’s recently completed four murals projects for the Winchester Cancer Center and has even found his way over to the Upperville Colt and Horse Show grounds to do a gorgeous painting of its historic setting under the oaks.
Over the years, he’s travelled abroad to study all manner of decorative art techniques, new and old, and he’s also taught classes, both in Europe and the U.S., in the various specialties he’s mastered.
These days, he devotes major energy to showing his work in fine art shows and galleries, and paints commissioned murals on canvas. He also has four children, and said his wife, Charleen, is his biggest supporter.
Clearly, it all results in John Kiernan being a very busy and productive man, with very little television and no badge necessary.
