Jessica St James blends classical training with contemporary practice, creating etchings and spoken-word performances that delve into mysticism, ritual, and the fragmented psyche. Her work bridges technical mastery and intuitive expression, drawing on themes of healing and transformation.
Jessica St James is an English, London-based artist, writer and performer specialising in copper art, intaglio etching, and spoken word.
With an academic background and classical art training, St James’ work is both highly disciplined and instinctual, and embodies this duel passion. Her text-infused etchings and spoken-word performance carry an erotic or confessional element, as well as a sense of the numinous, simultaneously touching on both modern anxiety and mysticism.
St James trained in at the Charles Cecil studios in Florence, where she was taught the sight size technique, an intense and highly focused way of drawing and painting from life, notably used by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). The Charles Cecil studios are a world renowned Florentine school of drawing and painting, known for its in-depth life drawing classes, teaching artists how to apply principles of light, volume modelling and rhythm. These principles and artistic discipline are clearly visible in St James’ practice.
“I believe that trauma can fragment the psyche and forge a surrealist landscape of the mind in which our “vital spark” or soul is sequestered away and distilled, and that the resulting psychical phantasmagoria can allow us access to the Numinous, glimpses of the patterns of the angel of the bizarre beneath the framework of the everyday. I tried to capture and express this chiaroscuro in the works.”
Jessica St James went on to study etching and engraving at the Royal Drawing School in London, the predominant technique of her work today. St James also holds a first class BA (Hons) in English Literature, an MA in Issues in Modern Culture from University College London, and a postgraduate diploma in Art Therapy from IATE. St James’ copper etchings hold both of highly skilled technical values and an astute understanding of the human psyche. The artist models figures effortlessly, whilst combining an inherent ability to both portraying personality and human magnetism through lyricism and formal modelling.
I see language as incantation, and I believe that certain constellations of words hold immense power, like keys, keys like chords, and I believe that objects and places can be infused by our energy and significance, through individual and shared ritual, meaning, and energy. I was attempting to pour energy into the copper plates, infuse them with incantation and meaning, and in doing so imbue object with thought.
Jessica St James’ work is both figurative in its portrayal of the human, but also incorporates highly elements of poetry and spell writing. Her developed skills as an etcher-printmaker allow her to model figures and atmospheres, as a whole, creating highly romantic, and and celestial compositions. Jessica St James’ mastery of light and texture emphasise emotional; depth and turmoil.
Jessica St James’ work has visible technical awareness, yet is also filled in intuitive mark making. The texts in her works are often spells, disguised as highly illuminated scriptures. She draws inspiration from William Blakes’ Illuminated Books, and references both his highly intricate scriptural and his mythical elements. Her work, just like William Blake’s references the malaise of Modern Culture, the resultant alienation from oneself, one’s world and one’e fellow human beings and that recovery relies in the process or reintegration. St James’ fundamental subject of interest is the woman, how she sits and feels within society, the obstacles and adversities encountered. Her works draw inspiration from her life as a mother, its physical and emotional bearings. Jessica St James portrays the rituals and protocols which hail from being a woman.
“For me, the work touches upon Modernist alienation from society, post modernist alienation from self, and post-post modernist meta self-watching and alienation from the present.”
This underlying theme is expressed in the works through the use of detailed and deliberate mark making, as well as painterly aquatints. The aesthetic is not dissimilar to the one of Rembrandt, an inspiration for early Romantic artists.
Each of these text-infused etchings is a spell:
“I created ‘The Unlimited Dream Company’ series to heal myself, to achieve an alchemical healing process in tangent with the alchemical etching process, but there are other, more mystical elementals to the work.”
“The works are also loaded with psychological significance, and refer to Lacan’s ‘The Mirror Stage’, of first realising our separation from the world. There is an irony here as we use these “modern mirrors” to create and sustain intimacy.”
Jessica St James’s recent past shows include; Group exhibition ‘Art in the Age of Now’, Fulham Town Hall, the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, Solo exhibition at ‘The Black Book’, Dean Street, December 2021 – February 2022. Her work features in the Royal Collection.
