About Jessica Ward
Jessica Ward was born in Agana, Guam in 1982. She has traveled and lived around the world because her father was an Air Force officer. As a child Ward could always be found sketching and drawing and aspired to become an artist when she grew up. She attended Kendall College of Art & Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan and received a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art-Drawing with a minor in Illustration. Ward’s art work is inspired by eating disorders, which she herself has struggled with with since adolescence. Working exclusively in the drawing medium, she uses graphite, color pencil, chalk pastel and water color on paper or board.
Jessica currently resides in Los Angeles, California with her husband Apricot Mantle. She had her first gallery show in 2008, and has been exhibiting her work internationally since.
Jessica Ward has a brilliantly dark mind. The majority of her work is black and white, which really helps to maintain her macabre aesthetic. The nature of her drawings feel sexual and violent, while tempting and frightening the viewer. She has an interesting series of drawings that depicts deities of various eating disorders. According to her bio, Jessica has struggled with eating disorders herself, so the diety series comes from a very personal place.
- Beautiful Decay Magazine 2010
“Guam-born artist, Jessica Ward, is not about to glamorize being a teenage girl with lip gloss and mini-skirts. Her vivid graphite and color drawings of female figures with detached limbs and incomplete bodies are a visual reminder that hidden neuroses can pop up in the prettiest of places. Exposing the paranoia of eating disorders and teens, Ward’s subjects become more monster than teen and illustrate a storybook of inner delusions where hair is a girl’s worst enemy and cats become accepting protectors and symbols of escape.” – Content © L’etoile Magazine 2009
Links:
Sketch Theatre
Girls Drawing Girls
Beautiful Grim
ArtSlant
Gawker Artists
Apricot Mantle
Creative Concepts Enterprises