Jes Reyes is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in St. Paul, Minnesota.

JES REYES

I am an experimental filmmaker that turned to painting in 2015 after my mother passed away due to a terminal illness. As I finished my graduate degree from the University of Minnesota in 2013, I began a path of creating intimate video poems that focused on my experience with grief. Though the work was tremendously important to process living through loss, making these films involved remembering the past; it was something I needed but was often a difficult place for me to go. By adding painting to my approach, I’ve been able to create work that isn’t necessarily related to my mother’s death and our life together, but more about where I am currently, now that she is physically gone. Abstract painting has balanced my creative practice and has been very therapeutic for me because of its intuitive nature. It helps me stay in the present and experiment with thoughts as they take shape; all of which creates for me a fluid mindset centered on growth and learning. Now, I can't stop painting, and I don't want to.

Each painting of mine explores emotion through its fluid and fused layers and expressive colorful elements. Watercolor has traditionally been my primary medium because I am drawn to its uncertainty and engaging quality. I will often work on paper and incorporate ink, acrylic, gouache, collage, or graphite into my art to experiment and add texture. Grids, aerial like views, and loops are gestures that appear regularly in work as they help me visually create structures and spaces that represent places, memories, or experiences that are difficult to express with words.

I am currently expanding my visual art into working with acrylic on canvas as well as exploring felting. I like to push my curious nature so that I expand my approach with visual art.