British Artist Jesse Leroy Smith is a highly respected painter, curator, collaborator and mentor working in both Newlyn, Cornwall and Brighton. His figurative painting is shaped by collage, drawing, print, film, books and the public art projects he curates. Jesse studied Fine Art at Norwich School of Art, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Painting at the Royal Academy Schools from 1989 to 1992. He exhibits internationally, and recent residencies and practice research includes his extended travels through Germany, Greece and Ireland.
Figurative painting is at the core of Jesse’s practice, while collaboration, curation, teaching and travelling all allow film, installation, performance, print and drawing to inspire changes in his work. The central theme of his imagery is his own family, an ever-evolving set of relationships in which emotion, desire and identity are tangible, fluid and vivid. He collates scrapbooks in which friends, family and heroes are montaged with ancient art alongside film stills, creatures and landscapes from his travels, and these collections of dreamlike memories often form the basis of his paintings. Together, his ongoing collections of work form a collective portrait based on the ancestries we all resist or embrace.
