Jessie Homer French

Jessie Homer French is a self-taught, self-proclaimed “regional narrative painter” and longtime resident of Southern California. Her “mapestries”—a combination of the words “map” and “tapestry”—are graphically simple yet finely detailed. Deploying flattened forms, text, pictures, and irregular perspective, she demonstrates her intimate knowledge of the physical and environmental landscape in which she has lived as a resident of Los Angeles, La Quinta, and now Mountain Center near Idyllwild (located about fifty miles west of Palm Springs).

Inspired by cartography, Mapestry California graphically illustrates the iconic natural and built elements in the state, including the Pacific coastline, the San Andreas Fault, the Sierra Nevada and bordering Nevada. The Southern California region where she lives is particularly identified through a series of orienting markers, including the windmills in the San Gorgonio Pass and a black stealth bomber notating Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, as well as a whale, a coyote and a Joshua Tree.

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