Dive into Jess Quinn’s surreal, colour-filled world. Jess’s unique vision is vivid and unsettling - through her work she explores female archetypes and  the experience of the female artist whilst facing her own demons.

Her paintings reflect her personal struggle to survive and create in a restrictive and oppressive domestic space - the struggle to find her voice and independence, the struggle to reconcile child rearing with making art. 

She skilfully weaves together memories and real events with fictional characters and places borrowing from fairy tales, folklore and history of art. It is a thrilling and potent mix  and we cannot wait to share her enigmatic, compelling paintings with you.

‘I am not afraid to use colour and pattern and often employ an abundance of both. We tend to associate colour with a childlike lack of sophistication especially in Western culture where we are encouraged to employ restraint in order to show maturity and sophistication. I have no interest in a muted world.’ - Jess Quinn

‘Jess is a figurative artist of both narrative and surrealist disposition. That narrative however is hardly explicit, often casual, almost throw-away in its sly references and darkly fanciful associations. It draws freely upon myth, legend and fairy tale, and upon art history too, or seems to do so, for the hint is there, but left to us to pick up: so too those odd, scarcely noticed particular details – of socks, shoes, hats, collars and cuffs, rings and ribbons, a crab, a cat. There is to it all a quietly unsettling, febrile, almost angry intensity of mood and feeling quite its own’ - William Packer, Artist & Art Critic - Quote from catalogue introduction. 

Jess Quinn was born in Bristol in 1968 to a British father and American mother. Childhood summers were split between the beautiful hills of Snowdonia and the vast flat farmlands of Indiana. She trained at Glasgow School of Art, 1993-96, gaining a first class degree and the prize for best degree show. Family and children followed. Jess went on to train as an art teacher and returned to painting with renewed vigour in 2016. She lives and works outside Cardiff.

CONTACT | katherine@kittoecontemporary.com with all enquires