Jesse Jacobs

Born on the East Coast of Canada in Moncton, New Brunswick in 1981, Jesse Jacobs studied art at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. With a focus on drawing and printmaking, he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2005. Jacobs’ visual art is known for its precise and detailed linework in combination with bold and simple colour palettes. His comics contain an affiliation with psychedelia, spirituality, and alternative realities.
In 2011 AdHouse Books published Even the Giants, a collection of his first comics.
In 2012, the Artist published By This Shall You Know Him with Koyama Press, his first full length comic work (later translated and published by Eris Edizioni). It is a book about the cosmos, construction and destruction, and form and pattern. The story involves a virant depiction of the lives of celestial beings and molecular forms. It set the tone for subsequent alt-comics: Jacobs often tackles anxieties by representing them in a bizarre and kaleidoscopic way. Through its creation, Jacobs learned a lot about creating comics, and discovered the practice of allowing the drawing process to guide a narrative.
Jacobs’ followed By This Shall You Know Him in 2014 with the monochromatic Safari Honeymoon. The story follows a pair of young newlyweds descending deep into a mysterious forest, encountering unknown creatures and unimaginable landscapes. It is an exploration of a self-contained eco system, complete with its own distinct evolutionary paths. The central motif of the book is that of parasitic relationships and a union with a beautiful and terrifying natural world.
In his latest book, Crawl Space, Jacobs expanded upon his minimalist approach to colour with an explosive rainbow-hued world. A group of neighborhood children discover a portal of psychedelic weirdness, filled with iridescent creatures and the curious smell of lavender-detergent, and a place distinctly at odds with the graying normality of their suburban world. In this fraught realm, Jacobs asks whether friendship can survive the allure of the psychedelic.
Jesse Jacobs has exhibited work in North America, Europe and Japan. His stories have been selected for the 2012, 2013, and 2015 editions of Best American Comics. His drawings have appeared in The New York Times, The Pitchfork Review, McSweeney's Quarterly, and Le Monde Diplomatique. He currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario with his partner Jinette and his dog Desmond.