Faith Jessup
“While I consider myself to be a realist painter, my interest lies in creating a world of impossibilities.”
Work
Faith Scott Jessup paints from observation and from her imagination. In her studio, she often illuminate small plastic animals with a table lamp and, through the process of painting them, conjure them into life. A tiny plastic chicken becomes a proud hen who has laid impossibly large eggs. Green lizards circle around the base of a bouquet, like fallen leaves.
Faith likes to create a heightened sense of reality by imagining her animals and objects as actors on a darkened stage with a single source of light intensifying their presence.
Her work is fluid and feminine. The everyday objects in her canvases appear luminous against a dark and sensual backdrop. Many of Faith’s pieces juxtapose common animals and objects in unlikely ways. For instance, we see a toy rabbit with a lemon; a lizard balancing over a teacup; a zebra posing alongside a sailboat; or a sheep with rose petals.
