"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 my mind to this body and am continually amazed that a small movement of brush can capture a large movement of limbs through water. More astounding yet: a painting can become terrain for the viewer, inviting them to re-member their imagined self to their real body, and reclaim the feeling of being alive."
Jessica’s current studio is located in Camden, Maine where she and her husband, Jonathan, own and operate Making Movement, a clinical massage practice. They work specifically with artists and athletes, treating pain conditions that limit creative and performance potential, helping clients return to, and excel at their art or sport. Together, in all their life and work, Jonathan and Jessica believe in the integrity of the human body, the vitality that is this body in motion, and the necessity of moving in, through, and with the natural world.
Jessica received her B.F.A. from The Cooper Union School of Art and was named one of Glamour Magazine’s Top Ten College Women of 2003. Her work as an artist-in-residence at Ground Zero in New York City after September 11, 2001 earned her the Clark Foundation Fellowship with which she pursued her self-directed M.A. at New York University’s Gallatin School, combining work in the fields of art, religion, and public service. Perhaps surprisingly, it was Jessica’s training at the small Sage School Of Massage in Bend, Oregon that marked a turning point in her art career. In 2016 she accrued hundreds of hours of clinical, hands-on palpation of the human body while studying anatomy, physiology, and kinesiology, all in the context of the outdoor athlete’s paradise of Central Oregon. As a lapsed plein air painter in search of a new vision for her landscapes, she found it in a new and joyfully embodied experience of the natural world.
Jessica’s most recent work is influenced by the following people, resources, and ideas: Katy Bowman, Tom Meyers, Ido Portal, Dr. Jack Kruse, Dr. Zach Bush, The Liberated Body podcast, 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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“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.”
“[Jessica’s paintings] reveal her intense, personal engagement with the complex, often mysterious, act of seeing.”
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.”