Jessie Homer French, a self-taught painter, has gained late-career recognition for her folk-art-inspired depictions of nature, mortality, and her love of fishing. This New York Times article traces her journey from quiet obscurity to international acclaim, highlighting key figures who helped bring her work to a global audience, including her husband, Robin French, and artist Billy Al Bengston.
Jessie Homer French b. 1940
Jessie Homer French is a self-taught American painter known for her deeply personal, symbolic depictions of rural landscapes, environmental themes, and the inevitability of death. Based in California, French embraces a folk-art-inspired aesthetic, characterized by a flattened perspective, bold colors, and meticulous attention to natural details. Her paintings often feature lakes, forests, cemeteries, wildfires, and other elements of the natural world, reflecting both a deep reverence for the environment and an acknowledgment of its fragility.
For much of her career, French worked outside the mainstream art world, but it was her husband, Robin French, who first drew attention to her paintings. Recognition grew further thanks to their old friend, artist Billy Al Bengston, who introduced her work to his gallerists, Esther Kim Varet and Joseph Varet of Various Small Fires—an influential gallery named after a book by Ed Ruscha. Since her first exhibition there in 2017, French’s work has reached audiences around the world. In 2022, she exhibited at the Venice Biennale, and last fall, a selection of her recent paintings was included in the Hammer Museum’s biennial, Made in L.A.
Her recognition has continued to grow, with two of her paintings being reproduced as billboards alongside the High Line in New York in the summer of 2023. Through her distinctive visual language, French bridges the personal and the universal, offering poetic reflections on nature, solitude, and mortality while solidifying her place in contemporary art discourse.
