Jessie Homer French: Fire, Fish and Death

French’s “regional narrative” paintings render death and destruction with a sense of disorientation and awe

Born in 1940 in New York, Jessie Homer French is a self-taught, self-proclaimed “regional narrative painter” who lives and works in Mountain Center, California. Recently featured as part of Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living, her paintings routinely feature archetypes of death, nature and rural life. Through a simplified language of apparently naive, flat colors and calm brushstrokes, her paintings emerge as a continuous analysis of her surroundings, in which creation and destruction coexist with exemplary candor. The paintings reproduced in Fish, Fire, and Death are a lyrical exploration of the fragility and beauty of existence, conveyed through soft brushstrokes and a vibrant palette. French, blessed with a poetic eye and a deft hand, reminds us of the transience of life by capturing the fleeting moments of existence in a way that is both haunting and idyllic.