Inspired by nature, Jess Stone cultivates wonder through her colorful, textural artwork
Mixed-media artist Jess Stone often notices texture in nature. It could be the bark of a tree she passes during her walks along the trail leading from her home to Lake Hartwell, or the surface of the rocks her young daughters collect.
The Anderson native brings those observations, along with childhood memories of growing up on 30 acres and visiting her grandparents’ lake home, into her space at Hive Studios. There she creates encaustic wax pieces infused with language and imagery and paintings whose sculptural surfaces look like colorful cake batter (they are actually layers of modeling paste, applied with palette knives and other tools, and acrylic paint). Each creation is an expression of her love of texture and color, of nature and the artistic process.
“Art is my anchor in life, and it’s the only thing that’s never really changed for me,” says Stone, who first proclaimed she wanted to be an artist at four years old. “It’s how I relate to the world. It’s intuitive—something I’ve always felt really compelled to do and that’s helped me process my lived experience.
“I don’t consider my work autobiographical, but I 100 percent draw inspiration from what’s happening in my life,” she adds. “I can look back at different times and see what I was making versus what I was living and experiencing. I feel really blessed to have that.”
Drawn to process-based art forms, Stone first created woodcut prints, exploring her interest in time and life’s trajectory while earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drawing from Clemson University. While at the Memphis College of Art, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree, she turned to bookbinding and mixed media, drawing and painting into the prints she created.
Encaustic artwork of Jess Stone
But a one-day artist demo of encaustic wax during grad school sparked her passion for the medium. “It will be a core memory for me. I immediately thought, ‘I need to do this,’” she says, adding that she bought encaustic materials shortly after graduating in May 2010. “I’ve been doing it ever since,” she says, adding that she’s working on a new encaustic series featuring birds, clouds, and windows. She expects to release it sometime this year.
Her ongoing series of texture blocks “are little impressions of nature and all its textures—an incision of a grassy spot, a rock, tree bark, moss, spider webs,” she says. The 4-by-4-inch canvases covered with bold marks and mostly monochromatic color serve as a starting point for larger works that depict everything from cloud-filled landscapes and profusions of flowers to abstract interpretations of dunes and waterways.
Busy juggling the day-to-day routines of being a mom, wife, and part-time art teacher, Stone says her process for creating each piece “is really about cultivating wonder and curiosity.”
She approaches each new canvas armed with an impression from nature—whether it’s the Lake Hartwell islands she and her family visit during day-long boating trips or the sparrow colonies she recalls seeing along the route to her grandparents’ home.
And she enjoys the journey where those observations and memories lead her. “When I was younger, I had a process where I planned out everything in my sketchbook and sometimes took photos,” she says. “I’ve let go of that because I want to go to the canvas and be surprised.”
Cultivating Future Artists
“I love art, and it appealed to me to share it with other people,” Stone says of teaching art, something that’s “always been woven into my artistic life.”
She first taught at local art camps as a high schooler. After grad school, she completed a three-year teacher certification program and taught in schools in Spartanburg and Anderson counties, at Anderson and Converse universities, and in classrooms across the state as a verified teaching artist with the SC Arts Commission.
She now teaches artist residencies periodically and regularly works with the Metropolitan Arts Council’s SMART Arts program. At the 2023 MAC Awards, she received the Carrie and Skip Gordon Teaching Artist Award.
“Process over product is a big thing for me when teaching—giving students that creative experience where they can understand the joyful part of the process,” she says. “It’s not about thinking, ‘It’s got to look like a Monet.’ It’s about taking that artistic step.”
To see more of Stone’s artwork, browse her website, jessstoneart.com, or follow @jess_stone_art. Her studio at Hive Studios in the Lofts of Greenville, 201 Smythe St., is open by appointment.
