Jess Valice (b. 1996, Los Angeles) lives and works in Los Angeles. She studied science at Santa Barbara City College for three years before leaving to paint, and is self taught. She works in oil on linen and canvas and draws in graphite, charcoal and oil stick. Her figures have oversized ears and wide, stoic eyes, and they carry the artist's own features: sitting tired or uneasy in rooms that ought to be comfortable, staring straight out. The paintings run on grief, loneliness and empathy, and the compositions borrow from a classical tradition of portraiture, including the pastoral backdrops of seventeenth century Flemish painting. Her early attraction to the liturgical art in churches, in the absence of any religious upbringing, is still there in the work.
Solo exhibitions include Home is Not a Place at Almine Rech, Paris (2025), her second with the gallery, following a solo show at Almine Rech in New York in 2024, and Human at Carl Kostyál, London (2022). Her work has been shown at Carl Kostyál in Milan and Stockholm, at Stems Gallery in Paris and Brussels, at Bill Brady in Los Angeles and Miami, at ATM Gallery in New York and at Library Street Collective in Detroit, and covered by Wallpaper, Whitewall and Artsy.
Valice took part in the group exhibition Tutti Frutti at Plan X Milan in 2022.
