Jessie Makinson

Jessie Makinson (b. 1985, London; lives and works, London) combines her skills in drawing and painting to build ecofeminist worlds in which human and non-human live in a contestant state of renegotiation. Makinson’s worlds are filled with objects abandoning their tasks and characters at once mysterious and familiar caught at a moment of tantrum. Her visual methodology is vast and ranges from contemporary science fiction to 17th and 18th-century erotica, pre-agricultural mythology, early Renaissance altarpieces, British folklore, and Flemish kitchen scenes. Plucking themes and narratives from British pop culture and mixing them, intentionally, with recognizable American motifs, she creates bold new contexts for both. Vivid colors describe tense, erotic scenes in which desirous characters are dangerous active participants, not passive permission givers. Makinson’s characters practice rituals, they embrace, plot, and conspire. They hold sexual power and disrupt expectations, inhabiting a universe that surprises, delights, and tests its audience.

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