About the Artist

I make paintings as a way of paying attention. I’ve been in love with nature my entire life, and the woods around my home have always been both playground and refuge. As a child, I spent hours outside and as an adult, I still walk the same paths to think, to breathe, and to listen. 

My oil paintings focus on exploring reverence, humility, and what it means to be a human animal in a noisy, hurried culture. I believe nothing in creation is wasted and nothing is without purpose. In my paintings, animals become archetypal figures and icons. My abstract encaustic paintings are not home decoration, but pieces that carry memory, meaning, and mystery.

I work primarily in oil paint and encaustic wax, often paired with gold leaf. Beeswax brings the physical presence of another animal community into the work. Gold leaf carries the visual language of halos and sacred icons, a way of marking something as precious and worthy of devotion. When I set a bird or abstract mark against a field of gold, I’m lifting it out of ordinary time into a space of reverence, suggesting that the divine is not distant but already here in the living landscape around us. My hope is that my paintings invite viewers to slow down and to remember that every life has value and a story.

 

Jessica Crouch is a rural Tennessee artist whose work is rooted in a lifelong relationship with the woods surrounding her home. Married for twenty years, a mother of two, and caretaker of many well-loved animals. She holds a degree in Studio Art but credits the land itself as her greatest teacher. Long walks through her family’s property, watching birds, noticing insects, paying attention to small, overlooked lives, shape both her imagery and her way of moving through the world.