Contact Jessica at pilgrimart@icloud.com

About

Jessica Kirkpatrick is an artist originally from California living in her adopted home Edinburgh, Scotland.  Her work is in private collections across the United States, Europe and Australia.  As an Abbey Award Fellow and RAIR Grant alumna, she has developed her work in vital art communities.   She believes that painting is a visceral anchoring into living sensation.  She is currently working on connecting geometric design to landscape painting  and hanging out with her two magical sons.

Let Us connect

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Follow  me on Instagram @msjkirkpatrickart

View fullsize Lovely private view at #grantonhub at amazing old industrial building turned community garden and art space. I loved going to my first opening in what seemed like forever and chatting with artists approaching climate change face on. A gorgeous mural
View fullsize Delighted to have pieces in this exhibit this weekend sponsored by the Edinburgh science festival. come along this weekend! #recycleart #ecoart #scotlandart
View fullsize I entered my trash art wall piece into a recycle-age exhibit @grantonhub so will be cool to see what other gems people make out of their rubbish! This is a dried paint skin, some packaging material and beach litter, bejewelled. Just a playful combina
View fullsize Hey guys what was your lockdown project? Mine was that I taught myself macráme, which was so fun because it blends well with Netflix. These are three pieces I designed using found materials, one from a dismantaled chair cover, another from fis
View fullsize Cutting ties
View fullsize Someone said she looks like a butterfly (@erinoes) and so I think I’ll call this piece “The Monarch” because it’s about finding your inner queen even when your scrambled up. It’s about drawing power up from the earth whe
View fullsize one of the larger paintings I’ve done in a while called ‘the goddess of discarded things’ the one who turns all the rubbish in our lives into magic. The image is based on a poem about fire meeting water I wrote, and experiences I&r
View fullsize Starting to paint using my sons play dough cups. Some people just don’t grow up #motherartist #loosepainting #crazyforcolor #splash
View fullsize Putting a heavy filter on this because I don’t like my colours yet, maybe I’ll sand it down and go monochrome a la richter
View fullsize A grumpy studio day, gotta get to work ugh

Statement

Space is what we move through in the world; however by painting I explore space as psychic, pictorial, digital and temporal.  If minds create order out of a series of relationships between shapes and colors, the notion that experience is subjectively cohered provides a backbone for my art.  Painting is an engagement with sensation—a play of form. It carves memories of places and dream-scapes. I define painting as a contemplative image-form which projects from the artists mind. I paint to engage my own mental space, to seduce my subconscious out into a material plane—to mirror my own nightmares, fantasies and narcissism. 

Technique is a gimmick— a series of methods and rules which guide the artists hand to create an image out of stuff. Technique without intelligence means nothing. One can rely on technique to connect a painting to an array of historicalprecedents.   As a technique junkie, I use a lack of style, a refusal to commit, to dance with the language of painting and perhaps even undermine myself as author.  My voice emerges in its cumulative effect, cutting through jungles of diverse material in pursuit of an unveiled expanded visage.

Woman is a body, but she is also a multifaceted collection of principals and conventions.  I engage in the battle of representing the feminine, but also allow her to guide me as a philosophy of being and making.  The feminine embodies values of relatedness and cooperation, nurturing, magnetism, sensuality and creative manifestation.  My recent entry into motherhood provides a framework for structuring an artistic life, a lifestyle and a psychic lens, that is both sensible yet disarrayed— fractured yet ever so tender.  

CV

EDUCATION

2010 MFA Edinburgh College of Art

2004 BFA University of Colorado at Boulder

2003 Studied Illustration School of Visual Art NY

RESIDENCIES AND FELLOWSHIPS

2017 Artist In Residency in Motherhood, (self directed 9 months) Edinburgh, UK

2013 Roswell Artist In Residency Program, Roswell, NM (funded 12 months)

2012 Abbey Award Fellowship for Painting, Rome, Italy (funded 3 months)

2009 Cove Park Centre, Helensburough, Scotland (2 weeks)

2009 John David Moonie Foundation, Chicago Il (2 weeks)

2009 Takt Kunstprojektraum, Berlin, Germany (1 month)

AWARDS

2019  Visual Artist and Makers Award, £1,500 Professional Development Bursary

2012 Open Eye Gallery Prize at Visual Arts, Visual Arts Scotland

2012 Leith School of Art Prize, Visual Arts Scotland

2007  Best in Show, Core New Art Space Juried Exhibition, Denver, Co

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2017 Ancient Pain—The EveryMovie, Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh UK

2015 We Are Walking, stArt up Art Fair, San Francisco, CA

2013 The Sculptor’s Model, Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM

2011 Emotional Wavelengths of Unseen Color, The Palour Bar, Edinburgh, UK

2010 Inexorable, Total Kunst Gallery, Edinburgh UK

2008 Where a Shoulder Bears it’s Edge, Denver, CO

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2019 re:Birth Spilt Milk Annual Members Show Edinburgh Palette, UK

2019 Alight, Visual Arts Scotland Annual Exhibit, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh UK

2018 oh motHER, Custums House,  Edinburgh UK

2018 Home, Old Prinworks, Birmingham UK

2017 Rair 50th Anniversary Exhibit, Roswell, NM

2017 2017 Center for Open Learning Student Show, University of Edinburgh UK

2012 RSA Open Annual, Edinburgh, UK

2012 Ex Roma III, APT Gallery, London , UK

2012 This is Where We Live Now, British School at Rome, Italy

2012 Lynn Painter Stainer Prize, Mall Galleries, London UK

2011 Visual Arts Scotland, RSA Edinburgh UK

2011 RECREA(C)TION, Art’s Complex, Edinburgh, UK

2010 Return to Source, Art’s Complex, Edinburgh UK

2010 Post-Graduate Show, Somerset UK

2009 Open Studios, Takt Kunstprojektraum, Berlin, Germany

2009 Third Wheel, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh UK

2009 Maquette, Big Red Door, Edinburgh UK

2008 3032 Miles, J.D Mooney Foundation, Chicago, IL

2008 Annual Auction, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder CO

2008 Emerging Artists, Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder CO

2008 Decalescence, Now Gallery, Denver, CO

2007 Art & Spirituality, Core New Art Space, Denver, CO

BIBLIOGRAPHY

06/2015, Presneull, Max, Fabrik Magazine, pg 76-77, Link

 04/28/2015 , Sam Whiting, SF Chronicle, Link

 11/23/14, Tess Townsend, “New Exhibit by RAIR Fellow” Roswell Daily Record11/23/14, Tess Townsend,  “New Exhibit by RAIR Fellow” Roswell Daily Record, Review

01/15/14, Techera Niyego, The New Collectors Book 2014, feature, pg 107 

13/11/13, Rosylyn Stevenson,  The Ruidoso Free Press, “So RAIR,” article, Link

11/21/13, T. Townsend, Vision Magazine, Roswell Daily Record, Article Link

 09/30/13,  Rebecca Wilson, SaatchiOnline  One-To-Watch, Link

06/12 British School at Rome Fine Arts catalog 2011-12, image, pg 28-29

3/2012   Society of Scottish Artists Annual Exhibition Catalog, image

07/08  Denver Westword,  Arts Section, exhibition announcement and cover image

TEACHING

2017 Illustration Instructor, City of Edinburgh Council Adult Learning, Edinburgh UK

2016 Drawing Instructor, Craigroyston Community High School, Edinburgh, UK

2016 Watercolor Instructor, Eric Liddell Center, Edinburgh, UK

2015 Middle School Art Teacher, San Domenico School, San Anselmo, CA

2014 Guest Artist, Elementary Arts Legacy Project, Roswell, NM 

2013 Drawing Instructor, Roswell Museum and Art Center Roswell, NM

2010-2012 Drawing and Painting Instructor, Leith Academy, Edinburgh UK

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art

PROFESSSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Going for Growth—6 Week Business and Marketing Seminar for Creatives July 2018

Creative Edinburgh Mentoring Workshop—Evening Training to work as Mentor Oct 2018