Jessica Hess

Jessica Hess is a painter living and working in Oakland, California. Her work focuses on street art and urban decay.

The artist explains her work by saying ”Rather than elegance or grandeur, my focus lies in structure, simplicity, and decay. In practice I work with photographs, which serve as both a reference and a starting point. My work develops from an accumulation of images and impressions of urban, industrial, and abandoned architecture. All street art evidences creative traffic and the time invested by others on my otherwise lonely subjects, adding color and excitement to otherwise dull locations. In reworking and transforming these locations my paintings further this collaboration of time, structure, and surface. “

A graduate of RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), Hess is a recipient of the Trent Burleson Painting Prize, the Faber Birren National Color Award and the Stamford Art Association Award for Excellence. Hess has been exhibiting nationally since 2002 and has shown at many galleries across the country.