Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and raised in Alabama and Georgia, Jessie now resides in South Carolina with her family and considers herself a true Southern girl.
The natural world has always held a fascination for her, as seen by the collection of found objects and mason jars filled with creepy crawlies that littered her back porch as a child... and her back porch to this day!
The natural as well as the supernatural, that magical world of the unseen, captured her imagination and has held it hostage with its secret delights. It was this other world that is only visited in books, movies and art, that she has found to be her biggest inspiration.
Friday nights were spent with Elvira in the 70's and 80's and whatever awesome B movie The Mistress of the Dark was hosting. Reading and rereading books like the Witches of Worm and later, anything Poe or King had written, she was mesmerized by all things spooky and otherworldly.
And, throughout her entire life there was art. She was coloring, drawing, painting, sculpting, beading, and collaging all the time, spending endless hours entertained by scary movies as she worked away on her latest creative endeavor.
Showing a love of drawing and painting as a young child, her parents encouraged her by keeping her stocked in a constant supply of crayons, paint and paper. They even made it possible for her to take art classes from the hugely talented photorealistic portrait artist Jeanie Maddox, whose aesthetic would heavily influence Jessica's own paintings some twenty years later.
In 1999 she graduated from Iowa State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis on painting and religion. Having developed a love for painting in oils, she spent her time honing her skills as a portrait artist under the direction of the immensely talented John Weinkien and Brenda Jones.
After graduation, through a weird turn of events, she spent the next fourteen years in the nuclear power industry which offered little outlet for her creativity, but did provide an opportunity for her to develop other skills that she had previously underutilized.
In 2014, she decided to practice the craft that had always been the hallmark of her being. Leaving the nuclear world, she embarked on a journey to become the professional artist that she had always dreamed of being.
Like all of the stages of her creative life, the work that she is doing now differs completely from any other, yet Jessica believes it to be the truest to her nature. She is infusing into her work the elements of her life that bring her the most joy. Her love of the natural world, the macabre, the inane, the magical, the grotque and the whimsical are all expressed with unbound freedom.
"Each piece delights me to imagine and then make. I hope they will delight you to own."
Photo Gallery
