Jessica Watts

Australian artist Jessica Watts produces joyful floral paintings with a feminist focus. Her collection of 1940s wallpaper is the inspiration for her acclaimed series of work “Wall ower". The series is an exploration into beauty: in particular, how appearances relate to the inner self.

She plays with pattern and brightly-coloured blooms to accentuate the strength and beauty of the self-possessed woman. Each painting features an anonymous female gure standing before a backdrop of vintage wallpaper. In most depictions, the subject's nudity is concealed by bouquets bursting with textured blossoms. Thick brushstrokes sculpt the owers' petals, accentuating their form and allowing them to stand out against the atness of the patterned surfaces.

The paintings explore a reclaimed concept of female empowerment by celebrating each gure's connection with nature. Similarly, by cloaking the gures in owers, she strives to capture them in a way that shows that beauty is more about the hidden than the revealed.

Jessica received a Bachelor of Design with Honors and the University Medal from the University of Technology Sydney before a long career working as a multi-award winning advertising art director, including working for over a decade in New York. She has been a full time artist since 2010 and currently works from her studio located in the northern beaches of Sydney.