M.J.: That’s a great side note though.
You mentioned college earlier. What was
your major?
Jessica: Well, I get excited by how
everything interconnects and functions as
a whole. So, I landed in American Studies
and really enjoyed studying elements of all
the social sciences — how they interrelate,
and how the United States functions
globally with other countries.
This interrelatedness informs a lot of what
I do when I go to national parks. Yes, I’m
doing landscapes and you could just have
that, but I feel there’s more I can feed into
a painting if I understand the history of the
area, the people, and the culture. It changes
how a place looks and feels. It’s not just
what you see on the surface; it’s all these
layers of history and experience, as well
as the simple things of what the air smells
like, and what the breeze feels like. I enjoy
being a part of that and trying to find ways
to translate that visually so there’s some
tangible sense of the experience of being in
that place.
M.J.: According to your website, you’ve
been Artist-In-Residence at many of our
national parks. Which one was the most
challenging to capture?
Jessica: With watercolor, everything is
challenging in its way, but at this point, no
subject or place is inherently more difficult;
some things just take longer to paint. In
watercolor, whites are typically achieved
by saving the white of the paper, and
lights do not layer over darks. Painting a
sunset with trees in silhouette is relatively
straightforward — paint the sky, then layer
the dark trees on top. Painting bright
shapes, like grasses or leaves, with a dark
or mixed value background is more time
consuming: the leaves get painted, and then
the background must be carefully dropped
in around the shapes of the leaves to define
their edges. Not exactly harder, just rather
tedious, and not everyone’s cup of tea.
One of the more time consuming national park paintings I’ve done is of the
Cholla Cactus Garden in Joshua Tree at sunrise. The bright sun glints off the
back side of the individual spines on each cactus, and achieving that look was a
real commitment.
M.J.: Which park was your favorite?
Jessica: All of them, for different reasons.
At Badlands, I got to work with biologists, paleontologists, astronomers, and
more, who gave me opportunities to participate in remarkable experiences and
explore the most remote regions of the park — that imparted a deep level of
understanding.
For example, I was asked to help with the bison roundup one year, which
involved racing across the prairie to drive a thousand bison into holding pens,
collecting blood and hair samples, witnessing every aspect of the process, and
photographing the week’s work.
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