We�re not there
Jessica�s work is informed by the things that surround her- the window screen, the pattern on the bedroom ceiling, the grain of the wood in the panel her husband made, or the makeshift construction of her old cabin-like bedroom. Though all personal points of departure, from these specific beginnings the subjects are physically transformed towards spatial abstraction. The intensive and repetitive marking, building up, altering, and sanding of the painting surface provides a way - for both Jessica and her audience - to inhabit tangible moments of shifting time and place.
Sedimentation is a good word, and seems relevant to the duration and accumulation connected to these paintings on plaster. Their rich layers have a relationship to Xylor Jane�s work, but the math and high optics are exchanged for a present and physical manufacture that may wear its maker�s Catholic upbringing on its sleeve. Jessica�s labor and search for a Fra Angelico-like light bring her paintings into a different type of meditative space than that which Jane conjures. But like Jane, as you stand in front of Jessica�s work, it shifts, gains depth, and reveals its history as you look longer. Each singular panel contains many paintings within it.
Jessica�s recent rubbings, entitled Remainders, are generated by covering the materially built up and scabby surfaces of her paintings with a piece of large bond paper, and indexing the topology of the most exterior layer with a large graphite stick to create a hand-made mimeograph. This means of replication makes sense in relation to the way that each painting is made. The artist writes of the Remainders, �I stop when I get the right impression of it. What I get is always unexpected. Sometimes it�s the first step in the painting that shows up � sometimes something totally eradicated � sometimes something I just couldn�t even imagine was in the painting.�
Making the rubbings moves the original and particular source of the paintings to a space of memory- a muscle memory, or an after image that generates a flicker of what it previously saw. Neither digital scans nor photographic details, the Remainders are impressions made by Jessica putting her body and weight on the panels and embossing the relief of each piece as an object. There is a constant mining going on in the making of the work and of these drawing extensions. I refer to these paintings as spatial abstractions because the process brings the work into sculptural terrains, and the Remainders function as proof of the paintings� various contours.
Matt Keegan
Jessica�s work is informed by the things that surround her- the window screen, the pattern on the bedroom ceiling, the grain of the wood in the panel her husband made, or the makeshift construction of her old cabin-like bedroom. Though all personal points of departure, from these specific beginnings the subjects are physically transformed towards spatial abstraction. The intensive and repetitive marking, building up, altering, and sanding of the painting surface provides a way - for both Jessica and her audience - to inhabit tangible moments of shifting time and place.
Sedimentation is a good word, and seems relevant to the duration and accumulation connected to these paintings on plaster. Their rich layers have a relationship to Xylor Jane�s work, but the math and high optics are exchanged for a present and physical manufacture that may wear its maker�s Catholic upbringing on its sleeve. Jessica�s labor and search for a Fra Angelico-like light bring her paintings into a different type of meditative space than that which Jane conjures. But like Jane, as you stand in front of Jessica�s work, it shifts, gains depth, and reveals its history as you look longer. Each singular panel contains many paintings within it.
Jessica�s recent rubbings, entitled Remainders, are generated by covering the materially built up and scabby surfaces of her paintings with a piece of large bond paper, and indexing the topology of the most exterior layer with a large graphite stick to create a hand-made mimeograph. This means of replication makes sense in relation to the way that each painting is made. The artist writes of the Remainders, �I stop when I get the right impression of it. What I get is always unexpected. Sometimes it�s the first step in the painting that shows up � sometimes something totally eradicated � sometimes something I just couldn�t even imagine was in the painting.�
Making the rubbings moves the original and particular source of the paintings to a space of memory- a muscle memory, or an after image that generates a flicker of what it previously saw. Neither digital scans nor photographic details, the Remainders are impressions made by Jessica putting her body and weight on the panels and embossing the relief of each piece as an object. There is a constant mining going on in the making of the work and of these drawing extensions. I refer to these paintings as spatial abstractions because the process brings the work into sculptural terrains, and the Remainders function as proof of the paintings� various contours.
Matt Keegan