Jess Collins: The Mysterious Alchemist of American Art

 Jess (Jess Collins) – American Artist

Jess Collins (August 6, 1923 – January 2, 2004), known simply as Jess, was a distinctive American visual artist celebrated for his unique paintings, collages, and drawings. Born Burgess Franklin Collins in Long Beach, California, he later rejected his family name and became known professionally as Jess.

Jess grew up surrounded by literature and classical music. As a child, he read L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, Edgar Allan Poe, and Marcel Proust, while listening to Beethoven, Mahler, Sibelius, and Brahms. He also created scrapbooks with his great-aunt — an experience he later identified as the origin of his lifelong collage practice.

His artistic work is deeply influenced by themes of alchemy, mythology, the occult, chemistry, and male beauty. Jess developed a highly personal and symbolic visual language that stood apart from mainstream art movements of his time.

Notable Works and Series

One of his most important series is Translations (1959–1976), consisting of heavily textured, impasto paintings created in a meticulous paint-by-number style. These works reinterpret found images into lush, dreamlike compositions. Six paintings from this series were exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum in 1975.

Jess also created elaborate murals in the late 1950s for the Berkeley home of renowned film critic Pauline Kael. These fantastical, Romantic-style murals still adorn the walls today.

In addition to painting, Jess was a master of collage. He famously repurposed vintage book illustrations and comic strips — most notably transforming the Dick Tracy strip into his own subversive series called Tricky Cad.

His final major work, the large-scale drawing Narkissos (over 6 x 5 feet), is considered a masterpiece and is part of the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).

Artistic Legacy

Jess’s art is appreciated for its poetic sensibility, intricate detail, and deep engagement with myth and mysticism. Though he worked largely outside the spotlight of major art trends, his work continues to influence contemporary artists interested in collage, symbolism, and alternative narratives.

Today, Jess is recognized as one of the most original and enigmatic figures in post-war American art.

 

 

Jess Collins Jess - Surrealist collage

Jess Collins (August 6, 1923 – January 2, 2004), simply known today as Jess, was an American visual artist. JESS was brom in Long Beach, California, the younger son of a civil engineer and a homemaker. Originally named Burgess Franklin Collins, he later broke with his family and changed his name to “Jess.” In childhood, Jess read the L. Frank Baum Oz books, Poe and Proust, listened to the music of Beethoven, Mahler, Sibelius and Brahms, and made scrapbooks with a great-aunt, which he credited as one origin of his later collage work.
"Many of Jess's paintings and collages have themes drawn from chemistry, alchemy, the occult, and male beauty, including a series called Translations (1959–1976) which is done with heavily laid-on paint in a paint-by-number style. In 1975, the Wadsworth Atheneum displayed six of the "Translations" paintings in their Matrix 2 exhibition.In the late 1950s, Jess also filled Pauline Kael's home on Oregon St in Berkeley, CA, with fantastical and Romantic murals, which still adorn the walls today. Collins also created elaborate collages using old book illustrations and comic strips (particularly, the strip Dick Tracy, which he used to make his own strip Tricky Cad). Jess's final work, Narkissos, is a complex rendered 6'x5' drawing owned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art."Wikipedia

Ronald Lockett - American visual artist

Ronald Lockett (1965–1998) was an American visual artist, combining painting with three dimensional objects. “Lockett's primary artistic mentor” was the painter Thornton Dial, his cousin.
"Ronald Lockett was born and lived in the “Pipe Shop” neighborhood of Bessemer, Alabama. He graduated from high school but stayed at home and pursued no trade; he always knew he wanted to be an artist. Lockett learned to paint by watching television and observing Dial, who became his mentor.His early works are paintings on plywood, commonly using a palette of black, white and red. His style is naturalistic; however, his figures flicker between representation and abstraction. Often, he would choose animals as his subjects and like the Dial family artists, animals were sometimes used as surrogates for humans. He began to add elements of collage to his paintings, using found objects such as wire, cloth, nails, and fencing to add texture to his surfaces. Some of these works are direct references to historical acts of violence, such as the Holocaust and the bombing of Hiroshima and provide social commentary.Later, his focus was on tin collage. For this he scavenged rusty tin siding covered with oxidized paint from nearby buildings owned by the Dial family. The autumnal colors of the oxidized paint suited his two primary themes; traps and rebirth. He cut and nailed strips of tin to the surface in abstract and/or figural shapes, and would sometimes add found metal pieces and wood in a patchwork motif reminiscent of quilt-making; a favorite pastime of his neighbor and great-grandmother Sarah Lockett.Lockett died in 1998 of pneumonia in connection to a long-term illness. His work can be found in many private and public collections."(justfolk.com)

Tom Wesselmann - New York Pop Art

Tom Wesselmann is considered one of the major artists of New York Pop Art, along with Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. Best known for his 1960s series “Great American Nude,” which featured flat figures in an intense palette of red, white, blue, and other patriotic colors, Wesselmann, in an effort to reject Abstract Expressionism, made collages and assemblages that incorporated everyday objects and advertising ephemera. In the early 1980s, he produced his first "Metal Works,” in which he shaped canvases and cut metal to create abstract three-dimensional images. In his final years, Wesselmann returned to the female form in the “Sunset Nudes” series, where the compositions, abstract imagery, and sanguine moods recall the odalisques of Henri Matisse.
"Born on February 23, 1931 in Cincinnati, OH, he was drafted into the US Army to serve in the Korean War in 1952. Returning home after the war, he studied drawing at the Art Academy of Cincinnati before working as an illustrator of comic strips and men’s magazines. In 1956, he moved to New York where he attended the Cooper Union. Soon after graduation, Wesselmann founded the Judson Gallery, along with Jim Dine and Marcus Ratliff. Beginning in the 1960s, with his Great American Nude series, Wesselman drew from Americana and media culture, to produce billboard-scaled paintings in flat bold colors. Like Dine, he was associated with the Pop Art movement but disagreed with being labeled as such. Through the following decades, the artist honed his idiosyncratic style while continuing to live in New York, NY until his death on December 17, 2004. Today, the artist’s works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others."(artnet.com)