Jessy Wilson-McFarlin
About Jessy Wilson McFarlin
Artist Overview
For Jessy Wilson McFarlin, art is a way of listening. Listening to the body, to memory, to the quiet interior spaces where voice and form originate. A GRAMMY nominated singer and songwriter, as well as a composer, film producer, and sculptor, she works across mediums with instinctive fluency and curiosity. Based in Austin and working in her atelier, Palette Studio, Jessy creates sculptural works and sound based compositions that explore presence, memory, inheritance, and the emotional weight carried within the body. Her practice extends beyond object making, inviting community into spaces shaped by intention, reflection, and sensory engagement.
Material and Process
Jessy’s sculptural canvases emerge through an intensely physical, nearly choreographic process. Using raw canvas, plaster, architectural paint, and mixed media elements such as graphite, oil pastel, and mineral matter, she shapes each work through a negotiation between vision and material. The pieces are lifted, folded, pressed, and gathered. Sometimes guided, sometimes defiant, until the surface reveals its own internal order.
These forms hold varied emotional registers. Some trace the suspension of memory and lineage. Others gather the quiet of meditation or the density of grief. The works move between vulnerability and structure, guided by a distinctly feminine sensibility that is both intuitive and rigorous.
Alongside her sculptural practice, Jessy composes and produces sound works that increasingly anchor her gestures. After years of contemplating how her disciplines might speak to one another, the connection has begun to reveal itself with clarity. The voice informs the hand. The hand informs the body. The body becomes a site where sound and form meet. Her vocal compositions, built through breath, resonance, and extended technique, shape the movement and mark making that occur on canvas, forming a dialogue between sonic impulse and physical trace.
Philosophy and Influence
Jessy approaches the studio as a place of revelation where the body, hand, and voice guide the emergence of the work. Rooted in the material honesty of Arte Povera and inspired by the experimental vocal architectures of Meredith Monk and Pamela Z, her practice embraces intuition over polish and presence over perfection. Each piece becomes a record of contact, resistance, pressure, and surrender. A material document of time lived and felt.
Presence and Recognition
A self guided artist across all mediums, Jessy’s work has been recognized for its architectural restraint, emotional depth, and distinct material language. As her practice expands toward more interdisciplinary and participatory forms, she continues to cultivate spaces both physical and sonic where audiences can encounter texture, sound, memory, and stillness as part of a shared experience.