Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Hello!

I'm Jessica, thanks for checking out my new endeavor, Jessica Thompson Art & Design!

I'm here to give you some insight into how my art comes to life.

Did you know I was a writer before I became an artist? It’s true! In the depths of old boxes live three-ring binders filled with character profiles, a few chapters of two novels, and even an award-winning short story (The Tulsa City County Library Competition’s Honorable Mention certainly counts). Then I worked sales jobs and talked to so many people every day that I ran out of words by the time I got home to write. (All you folks who thought I could NEVER run out of words, take note. It happened…once.) Those days taught me that my stories needed an outlet, but it didn’t have to be the written word.

The best parts of my writing were the vignettes. The little slices of everyday life, written in such vivid detail, you feel like you’re there with the characters. Hemingway writes amazing vignettes. His first major novel, The Sun Also Rises, contains a scene where the main character, Jake Barnes, is in Pamplona, Spain. The description of the sun on the back of the neck, the biting flies, and the humidity, sticky like honey on the skin, stuck with me. I wanted to do that, and I realized I was less interested in writing overarching plot lines than making the reader FEEL the moment. Although Seinfeld was wildly successful as a “show about nothing,” no one really wants to read a novel about nothing. So, I changed tactics.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say

any other way-- things I had no words for.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

Art does a much better job of expressing those stories in moments, for me. Color and composition tell the story as much as the subject matter. There’s more room for interpretation in a picture, more…mystery. Each one is a tipping point in someone’s story. Maybe mine. Maybe yours. You get to decide what happened before the moment you see, and what happens after.

So, if I want you to view my artwork as part of your own story, why am I here…writing many words about it?

Art feels like magic for a lot of people…like it is inaccessible to all but a select few. But behind the curtain, it is less mysterious than it seems. There’s a process to creating art, and I want to pull aside that curtain to let you see what it looks like from my side of the table. You’ll see all the successes…some of the failures, and you’ll get to see what the chaos of a work-in-progress looks like in the moments before it all starts to come together.

Throughout this series, you’ll get a peek inside my process, the design principles I use to help my storytelling along, and we’ll explore the bigger issues on my mind as an artist. Maybe we’ll even add an “ask the artist” category where I answer your questions.

Follow us on social media to capture it all, share your thoughts, your questions, or let me know if there’s a piece on JessicaTGraphics.com you’d like to learn more about.

Instagram: @JessicaTGraphics

Facebook: Jessica Thompson Art & Design

Blue Sky: @JessicaTGraphics.blsky.socia

TikTok: @JessicaTGraphics

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jessicathompson1176