ARTIST STATEMENT
My art emerges from an ongoing exploration of women’s interior lives—how they are shaped, silenced, remembered, and reimagined. Through drawing and mixed media, I seek to make visible the emotional and historical spaces that women have been taught to keep hidden. I draw with pencil and soft pastel because these materials carry the intimacy of touch; they hold hesitation, pressure, erasure—the marks of a body insisting on its presence. Each piece begins with a flicker of memory that contains an undercurrent of resilience, vulnerability, or defiance. For me, drawing is a way of discovering—of seeing more closely, and of translating experience into form.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jesse Lee Kercheval is a visual artist and writer whose multidisciplinary work explores memory and narrative. Widely known for her award-winning career as a poet and translator, Kercheval has developed a distinct and increasingly recognized presence in the visual arts. Her practice centers on drawings through which she creates intimate, atmospheric images that blur the lines between autobiography, myth, and dream. Her graphic memoir French Girl (Fieldmouse Press) was named one of The Washington Post’s Best Graphic Novels of 2024 and has brought wide attention to her visual work. Her second graphic memoir, Household Gods, is forthcoming in Spring 2027. Her art has been shown in group shows and in two solo shows, Drawn Lives (Edgewood College Gallery, Madison, Wisconsin, August 17-October 2, 2026) and I Want to Wear a Nightgown as Bright as the Sun (The Drawing Rooms, Jersey City, New Jersey, (July 17-October 2, 2026).
© Jesse Lee Kercheval