Jessica Lee Ives (née Jessica Stammen) (b. 1980) received her BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and her self-designed MA from New York University’s Gallatin School.
While Jessica loves to paint, she loves sitting in the sun on a warm granite rock or jumping in frigid wild waters even more. Her paintings are artifacts of the real life she lives with her husband, Jonathan. Together they run up mountains and wade through rivers to fulfill their innate human yearning for the natural world — and the natural world’s reciprocal yearning for the human, fully embodied and alive. Jessica’s paintings take shape in her body first. Her studio practice is simply disciplined and committed follow-through.
Jessica has studied anatomy, physiology, clinical massage and movement. She conducts ongoing research into the new biology of water and the physics of living systems. Her studio is located in Camden, Maine where she and her husband own and operate Making Movement, a clinical massage practice.
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“In these oil-on-panel paintings, Ives shows bodies in the water, swimming, jumping and playing. She paints from the perspective of the water’s surface, below the surface and looking down from above. These are masterful works because of her handling of bodies in motion and the fluidity of the water. We see bone structures and muscles that feel sculptural, water bubbles exploding from a swimmer’s plunge and the sun playing tricks on the rippling surface.”
“The works are like free verse, expressive yet disciplined, and always based on places where Ives has spent time.”
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“Jessica is a loose, fluid painter with a clean, keen sense of color and movement.”
"I always paint from a place of love—love for the world, and for the capacity of humans to know the world through movement, recreation, and adventure. Kinesthetic intelligence and imagination are very important to me; so is the sensation of wonder. I believe I can see through my skin, through my muscle, and through my bone. I love feeling my body move with, and participate in the landscape. Back in the studio I re-member (join) my mind to this body and am continually amazed that a small movement of brush can capture a large movement of limbs through water. Even more astounding to me is how a painting might become terrain for a viewer, an invitation to “come and see” via the activation of mirror neurons. My paintings succeed when viewers are inspired to step back outside, into the sun and into the breeze, and reclaim their feeling of being alive."
Jessica’s most recent work is influenced by the following people, resources, and ideas: Dr. Gerald Pollack, Carrie Bennet, Katy Bowman, plasma physics and the electric body, Tom Meyers, Ido Portal, Dr. Jack Kruse, The Liberated Body, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, river snorkeling, wild swimming, Josef Albers, Irwin Rubin, Don Kunz, and Irwin Kremen.
View Jessica's current CV here.
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Jessica Lee Ives talks about her career and work at Courthouse Gallery Fine Art on May 27, 2016. Ives' work was in "Fire and Water: Janice Anthony and Jessica Lee Ives," a two-person exhibition that explores each artist's interpretation of two opposing natural elements at the gallery from May 20-June 18, 2016.
Jessica and friend Shannon swim across Penobscot Bay from Ducktrap Harbor, Lincolnville (on the mainland) to Grindle Point lighthouse on Islesboro. They are escorted by a kayak and a sailboat. The water is about 65 degrees. It takes two hours to make the three-mile crossing.
“People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.”