We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jess Engle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jess, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I first began my lifelong lesson on being an artist when I was about four and my Nana gave me a box of colored pencils and put an apple in front of me on the kitchen table. For the next ten years I kept drawing apples and eventually my subject matter expanded to exotic birds, animals, plants, portraits and eventually to the hardest subject (for me) the abstract.

I am a kinesthetic learner, which means, I learn by just doing it. Even though I paint most days, I usually come into the studio feeling like I’ve forgotten everything I know. This is good. When I don’t have that beginner’s mind feeling and I think I know what I’m doing I get into trouble, because in the “knowing” there is no room for the life to come through.

Jess, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Jess Engle and I am a contemporary artist based in Austin, Texas. I make art for people’s walls that is fresh and bold with a modernist sensibility. My work and can be found in homes, businesses and retailers across the U.S. and internationally. I was really fortunate to have been one of the first artists to work with Four Hands to launch their wall art category, so my work is widely reproduced and sold in places like Crate and Barrel, West Elm, and Pottery Barn and has been featured on a number of HGTV shows.

I am most known for black and white abstracts, but I have been known to throw some color on the canvas from time-to-time. Whenever I try to put myself in a box in terms of subject, style or medium, I always have to break it.

I spent my formative years living in Ethiopia, Southern Africa and the Mediterranean and each place left a lasting imprint on my aesthetic and way of being in the world. Certain shapes, patterns, and feelings emerge when I create that I know were from woven baskets, ancient stones, Grecian ruins and African markets.

I took a break from doing art full time during the pandemic and I am just coming back to life as an artist, which is both exciting and terrifying! What is coming up for me this next season is getting my work out into the wild more (gallery representation is something I have been seriously considering for awhile) and sharing my life as an artist.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Freedom is the most rewarding thing about being an artist for me. There are many other awesome moments in the life of an artist – people wanting to live with your work, to watch you create things, the perfect stroke that contains the meaning of life, painting your heart away on massive canvases. It is hard to separate each of these tiny, beautiful moments, they all fuel the fire of creation. But, having the space and freedom to create everyday, that is it for me.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

The pursuit of truth and beauty.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jessengle.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studioxjess/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@studioxjess
• Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@studioxjess