I could also say the same about the titles she gives her work – from A Little Goes a Long Way to You're Hard Work But I Still Love You, in the exhibition of her latest work Eclectic in Badcock's Gallery, Newlyn, they are, to say the least, entertaining.
An artist who was brought up in the tiny remote hamlet of Trevowhan in Penwith, educated at Penzance Grammar School for Girls, Truro School, Falmouth School of Art and Goldsmith's, where she gained a BA (Hons) degree in textile and fine art, she then travelled widely throughout Europe and the USA.
One who has exhibited almost as widely as she has travelled, since her first solo show in the Bread Street Gallery, Penzance, 20 years ago, as well as being part of numerous mixed exhibitions, St Just-based Jessica has also enjoyed several solo shows from Cardiff to London, Cornwall to Warwickshire, and has long acquired and held a considerable reputation and following for her highly individual and instantly identifiable work.
Seemingly in constant search of simplicity in her compositions, while she pares them down to the minimum and likes to let a single line rather than several carry their weight, the content of her canvases is heavier than it at first appears to be.
Admitting to striving for perfect balance in her paintings, she said: "Shape, form and colour are built up by the application and removal of layer upon layer of acrylic and pencil on the canvas. Precision of composition – the perfect and almost geometric placing of an image is of the utmost importance, as is an uncluttered simplicity that leaves much for the audience to read between the lines.
"Through the deceptive simplicity of mark, colour and composition I shift the viewer's perception of everyday objects and encourage them to find the one thing that is significant to them."
Asked the perennial question of what her paintings are about, she replied: "They're about particular memories and experiences which I record in sketchbooks. The isolated images in their painted world stand as signifiers – like short poems – to convey those overwhelming moments of understanding and feeling that life can occasionally dish up. The extraneous is edited out so that the images stand alone, becoming metaphors for time and place and our emotional continuity."
While the inspiration for the paintings in this exhibition, as she says, has developed from "an eclectic source" – hence the exhibition title – the one "underlying influence" has been that of the sea.
"More and more I have to acknowledge the fact that, the space and vastness and horizon contained within the north Atlantic coastline and its water has a profound, subconscious effect upon my work. Whether it's in the white canvas holding a seemingly floating bowl or in the anchored line linking little houses on a cliff, the unknown, the power, the calm, the beauty and the isolation that I find in the sea are there in the work."
What more can one say, other than that these paintings by an artist whose integrity matches her imagination are not to be missed.
They are accompanied by a flock of charming avian sculptures created by Bath-based Celia Smith. An artist who, as it has been said, draws with wire rather than with pencil or pen, she captures and conveys a strong sense not only of the look of her subject, be it dunlin or oyster catcher, but also of its movement, mannerisms and character.
Much to her credit, her sculpted birds are also eco-friendly with the wire from a scrapyard and recycled by her.
Admission is free in Badcock's Gallery, The Strand, Newlyn, 10am-5pm Monday-Friday, and 11am-5pm Saturday, until November 3.
article copyright THE CORNISHMAN