Jessica Taylor Bellamy (born 1992 in Whittier, CA) received an MFA from the Roski School of Art at the University of Southern California in 2022. Bellamy’s work has been featured in exhibitions with Anat Ebgi (LA/New York, NY); GRIMM (New York, NY); Charlie James Gallery (LA); Make Room LA (LA); Superposition Gallery hosted at Ochi Aux, LA; and Lyles and King Gallery (New York, NY). Bellamy is the recipient of artist grants from the Los Angeles Lakers–sponsored “In the Paint” art program (2024–25) and LACE Lighting Fund (2025). Bellamy lives and works in Los Angeles.
What does it mean to make drawings, especially over other art forms?
For me, drawing is an exercise in restraint and directness. Unlike in my paintings, I work in drawings with a limited palette, usually just black and white. I’ve always been drawn to the relationship between text and image, and drawing gives me a way to bring in my own handwriting as mark and meaning. It’s a ritual of contrast, a way to explore my ongoing fascination with light and dark, both visually and thematically. Through drawing, I navigate the tensions in my work: sunshine and noir, utopia and dystopia, human and nature, fantasy and reality, image and text, time collapsing and unfolding all at once.
What kind(s) of rituals are embedded in your drawing practice?
So much of my art practice involves sketching but more in the form of a daily visual diary. I’ve kept these “sketchbooks” around since 2019 with ideas for paintings. What ends up in them are mind maps, titles, notes, and layouts for future shows. I draw the most in my studio is when I am animating with paint on glass, using traditional stop-frame animation techniques. There are no physical remains of those drawings; each are photographed and erased for the next frame in order to translate into layered video pieces. I also tend to be drawn to techniques on less common materials, with charcoal and screen printing on canvas versus paper, and oil on glass.
In what ways does Los Angeles influence (or not) your approach to drawing?
The desire to translate and explore the city through sketching meets the impulse to document and catalog its constant changes.The lines of the city: gates, construction sites, and the familiar shapes I pass each day become visual notes.Smudges of smog, ash, and other suspended particles smear the sky like charcoal outside my studio window in Inglewood, yet barely register at home in Playa del Rey.Shade: its politics, its history. Who gets to have it in Los Angeles? Growing up with hundreds of tree-lined streets in Whittier, only to drive to my extended family in South LA and find diffuse light rare. From sunlight used as a weapon in the removal of Pershing Square’s urban forest to endless op-eds debating the fate of my favorite jacaranda trees.