‘Sanctuary Down The Road’ by Tess Gadwa / Charlotte Magazine, November, 2003, Charlotte, NC
"...Look at Kirk’s art, or at his piercing brown eyes, and you’ll notice a certain intensity. In his paintings,some figures brood, while others exult, but each work strives to create a vidid emotional state. The art is meant to mean something. Pastel decorator art it is not. You can see this intensity in the bold colors, emphatic lines, and fragments of poetry woven into Kirk’s expressionistic style. You can see that same intensity in Kirk’s entire attitude towards work. Some people might envision an artist’s life as a pleasant second career or an excuse to stay out late and avoid the responsibilities of a regular job. But at age forty-three, Jerry Kirk has spent his career defying the stereotype.
“He’s the hardest working, highest production artist I have ever met in my life... he paints religiously,” says fellow NoDa artist Steve Holt. "His enthusiasm doesn’t flag. He’s been very prolific. He amazes the rest of us,” agrees Rusk Masterton. Both artists have known Kirk since the early days of NoDa...”

‘A Refuge For Art’ by David Moore / Creative Loafing, July 23, 2003, Charlotte, NC
"...Gallery owner Jerry Lee Kirk can’t go without mention here - his work is whimsical and eye-catching in a way
that I’ve seen captured only by other artists such as Picasso, Peter Max and Paul Cadmus. He loves to create crowd scenes that are busy and funny with lots to look at, as well as downright hysterical absurdities like “Jesus and Elvis Grocery Shopping,” while at the same time he’s capable of surreal imagery, as in the piece title “Happy.” It made me think of scary clowns.”

'Right Side Of The Tracks' by Scott Lucas / Creative Loafing, June 4, 2003, Charlotte, NC "...Kirk has many of his own paintings here, some from his own hand, some from his alter ego Tony Java. Kirk continues in a now established path that approaches broad human issues - death, love, desire, salvation - using historical and anonymous characters, sane and maligned, which invade his prodigious imagination. "Chaos Troubadour (March of the Republicans)” depicts the arrival of Jesus carried by Amish buggy, accompanied by a host of players marching fretlessly toward the Apocalypse. It’s Mardi Gras merged with a funeral procession. Soldiers, tanks, secret servicemen, Superman and Moses, nuns, clowns, masked men and a stylin’ Moolah. This confederacy of dignitaries and dunces forges a path beneath a sky of orbiting planets in an enraged sky - chaotic, fiery, explosive. I get the feeling the man is either warning us or making fun of us. Am I paranoid? Is he? Should we all be”?

"'Eclipse at Sunset' by Scott Lucas / Creative Loafing, May 15, 2002, Charlotte, NC "...one of these buildings house the final show of the Eclipse Group, a loose confederation of like minded painters who are the hearbeat of NoDa. Will a pulse be audible with their loss?... For a group with no leader, Jerry Kirk is the leader. He leads by dint of his talkativeness and his ablility to put to words what others express in eye contact, winces, nods, laughs and hoots. Though all these guys express themselves well, Kirk is the most fluent in media-speak; he appears to be the mouthpiece for the mind set. Kirk's work is comical, self-conscious, character laden and opinionated. He chronicles the world around him, sometimes exposing the laughing heart behind the pock marked face. In "Sunset on NoDa", we see the street element, his street element - gallery owners and art crawlers, artists, shop owners, street people, urban clowns. The painting is fronted by portraits of the Eclipse boys and surrounded by local luminaries from the neighborhood. Davidson Street is a blue river, swirling upward and away from the crowd toward the glimmering uptown towers. A winged monkey in a shirt and tie flies overhead, carrying a briefcase spitting dollar bills. The NoDa denizens ignore the monkey, smiling stoic and foolish smiles that say, "I can't be bought". The painting is Kirk's swan song for his clan of perennial ugly ducklings - a goodbye and hello from the band of irascible and irrepressible changeling artists."

Underground Charlotte Artists' by Scott Lucas / Creative Loafing, January 13, 2001, Charlotte, NC "Jerry Kirk is an artist I have seen exhibited often. His paintings are difficult to forget. Kirk uses his poetry as a leaping off point for his visual images. He will often incorporate a line of poetry into his painting. In 'Obsession', Kirk writes across the bottom of the painting: " I am haunted by you. From my suffering self I would tear out my soul to walk as an empty vessel through life if it would end your possession of me". A naked male figure grieves in the foreground, his muscular blue body twisted, his face in one hand. A naked woman floats seductively above and behind him. Kirk takes on starkly personal human issues - love, sex, betrayal, rejection. His unapologetically emotional tact is stark and can come off as maudlin. It's jarring, embarrassing, refreshing. His risk taking is admirable. "Salvation" is a parade of 9-5ers, marching home from work. These suits carry the faces of hollow men, eyes fixed and glazed. The painting mocks those who anticipate a better life after this one, those who resign themselves to an earthly hell in hopes of salvation in the hereafter. Kirk's cartoonish horror exposing lives senselessly deferred is reminiscent of many artists bent on social commentary, from Goya to Leon Golub. Kirk's strident and heavily outlined style recalls the meaty hand of German painter and illustrator George Grosz".

'Night moves: In search of the artistic' by Olivia Fortson and Tonya Jameson / The Charlotte Observer, November 5, 1999 " Wrightnow (gallery) . . . features a lot of works by local artist Jerry Kirk . . . his mixed-media paintings alternate from fun to freaky. He is another example of an innovative artist who came to NoDa in the early 90's. He and Holt are both part of a hip little group of artists called Eclipse, which is planning a show of works inspired by the millennium. Kirk is also a cheerleader for the area and even produced a video, "NoDa: The Evolution of Charlotte's North Davidson Street Art District."

'Jerry Duty - At 38, Charlotte artist Kirk comes into his artistic destiny' by Lawrence Toppman/ The Charlotte Observer, April 3, 1998 ". . . today he (Kirk) celebrates his 38th birthday with "In Celebration of Strange Days", a collection at Witzen's Studio and Gallery uptown. . . his (Kirk's) work is direct and forceful, usually figurative, often expressing a primal emotional state from romantic rapture to heart-gnawing anxiety. He can be unsettling. The character on the front of his portfolio is a smiling, muscular clown in whiteface, holding wilted roses and tipping his hat; an eyeless raven perches on his shoulder blade, and the word "Death" floats overhead. But even at it's most disturbing, the work's accessible.

'Winners in Winston' by Olivia Fortson / The Charlotte Observer, January 2, 1998 "Three Charlotte artists who've become known among the North Davidson crowd get a chance to wow viewers in Winston-Salem. Jerry Lee Kirk and Tyler Strouth have separate solo exhibits at the R.J. Reynolds Gallery in the Sawtooth Center through Feb. 7. Raid Ahmad will show his work in the Boardroom Gallery of the Winston-Salem Arts Council through March 6. Do they have anything in common? Hints of expressionism and surrealism, perhaps - and skill."

'Two Local Galleries Show Accomplished Works' by Sandy Seawright / Break Magazine, January 22, 1997, Charlotte, NC " ...At the Wrightnow Gallery . . . Raid Ahmad, Randy Crawford, C. Frank Haas, Jerry Lee Kirk, Aaron Knight, Mac Masterton and Lepton Neutrino have just opened an exhibit titled, 'Charlotte: We Live Here Too!' The artists show that they love working and living in Charlotte, but at the same time, they also satirize our city's weaknesses. . . Jerry Lee Kirk, whose work continues to become more refined, has painted the bay interior of Pat's Time For One More bar that is haughtily real. Painted in blue values, it has the feeling of Van Gogh's pool hall. In fact, you can stand on the sidewalk and look through the gallery window and into Pat's at the same time and see the same scene in two dimensions and three dimensions."

'New Art at 23 Studio' by Sandy Seawright / Break Magazine, July 3, 1996, Charlotte, NC ". . . If you like the style of Picasso, but you can't get to the Picasso Portrait Show at the museum of Modern Art in New York City, you may want to check out Jerry Kirk's 'Picassoisms'. Kirk's lively paintings were inspired by Picasso, with structured expressionism and well-thought out color play. These paintings are Kirk's best to date, with an excellent sense of completion and closure."