Jessy Wilson-McFarlin
Austin-based multidisciplinary artist Jessy Wilson-McFarlin creates work that lives somewhere between painting, sculpture, and sound. She transforms raw canvas, plaster, and mineral pigments into large-scale sculptural works that feel at once quiet and deeply physical.
Jessy’s path to visual art is itself multidisciplinary. A GRAMMY-nominated recording artist and songwriter, she brings an innate understanding of rhythm, movement, and repetition to her studio practice. In her work, those ideas become tactile: canvas is folded and pressed, surfaces build dimension, and subtle variations in texture become part of the composition.
Rather than beginning with a predetermined outcome, Jessy allows the material to guide the process. She describes working in a kind of ongoing conversation with each piece, using touch, repetition, pressure, and release until the canvas begins to respond. Plaster and mineral pigment capture the evidence of that process, preserving each gesture and imperfection within the finished work.
When I’m working, I’m in constant dialogue with the material. My practice lives somewhere between sculpture, painting, and sound, but really, it’s about listening.
The Hour She Slipped Away, plaster, raw canvas, acrylic, 70” x 60”
The resulting pieces balance apparent opposites: softness and structure, restraint and movement, delicacy and density. From a distance, a work might appear almost serene; viewed closely, its folds, shadows, irregularities, and material weight come forward. Jessy describes them as feeling “more architecture than ornament” - an idea that makes her work particularly compelling within a designed space.
Her practice draws inspiration from Arte Povera, Spatialism, and Minimalism, though she approaches those traditions less as formal rules than as a belief in material honesty and the expressive potential of a simple gesture. For Jessy, imperfection becomes part of the language of the work rather than something to conceal.
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