Jess entered the racing industry in her home village of Lambourn and rode as a
professional National Hunt jockey for six years before attending art school. After
graduating with distinction from the Byam Shaw School of Art she worked with
the Department of Palaeontology of the Natural History Museum, making
precision fossil drawings for archives and publication, and on a collaboration
between the Natural History Museums of London and China.
Jess left London to continue painting the wilder fringes of Wales and Scotland
before a sojourn in Yorkshire brought her back into close contact with horses.
Dogs, cows, pigs, and other animals entered the equation and her vision
expanded to include work resulting in bronzes of these other beings. Now finally
settled in West Wales with various rescue animals, her work is a daily record of
the distilled moments of this shared existence.