Kerns studied with the noted Abstract-Expressionist painter Grace Hartigan and through the elder artist came to know and work with many artists of that generation including, Phillip Guston, Willem de Kooning, James Brooks, Ernest Briggs, Richard Diebenkorn and Sam Francis.
Over the course of the 1970s and 80s, Kerns formed a close partnership with the Rosa Esman Gallery and exhibited ten solo shows there.
Often plywood or Upson board is used as support.”[3] Kerns began teaching in 1970, as an art teacher at the Bentley School in New York City.
In 1980, he left Friends Academy and moved to Easton, Pennsylvania, where he became the Head of Lafayette College’s Art Department.
[8] In 2007, Kerns collaborated with artist Elizabeth Chapman on “Word, City, Mind: A Universal Resonance,” an exhibit that used "paint, text, collage, and image, the exhibit focuses on the resonance between neurological, cosmic, and man-made forms".