About

Jessica Mallock is an artist based in Somerset, England, working in painting, stitch and participatory ritual.

"I receive symbols through deep listening: to the inner landscape, the outer landscape, and the threshold between worlds. I paint what arrives when I'm still."

Painting

I paint on canvas, paper and walls, using oil, acrylic, house paint and watercolour. Emerald green lines travel across corners and thresholds; cobalt blue forms rest within open white fields. Planes, rectangles and curves unfold slowly. Layers of paint accumulate, suspend time, and stillness becomes an experience.

Stitch

I stitch in silk, cotton and gold across linen, each stitch a step, a breath, a conscious action. Sewing becomes meditation, devotion made visible through thread.

Background

I am a visual philosopher, raised in Fife, Scotland, among glens, moorlands and coastline. Early immersion in land attuned me to subtle energetic shifts, deepened through decades of shamanic practice, therapeutic work and holding healing spaces. This embodied awareness informs each decision within the work.

Practice

Before painting, I cultivate stillness through meditation, contemplation and time in nature. Marks arise as elemental symbols, glyph-like forms shaped by breath, impulse and conscious attention. Each line, curve and shape is deliberate, expressing the non-verbal and shaping the energetic tone of the room. Colour carries its own frequency; shapes resonate with presence. Together, the work holds space, forming a quiet, sacred landscape.

Sewing circles

I also create participatory experiences: sewing circles where people are guided through shamanic journeys and then stitch their own sacred cloths in silence, surrounded by the paintings. These gatherings are collective altar-making, ritual as contemporary art. The paintings witness the making; the making activates the paintings.

Sewing circles are offered by invitation and arrangement. To be notified of upcoming gatherings, or to explore hosting a circle at your venue or institution, please get in touch.

Placement

My practice approaches placement as ceremonial. Works are positioned in relation to light and architecture, so that paintings become altars and rooms become contemporary sacred sites: thresholds for presence, contemplation and encounter with the unseen.

I live and work in rural Somerset, in the mythic landscape of Avalon, where land and practice remain inseparable.

Bio

Jessica Mallock studied at Central Saint Martins, London, gaining a BA in Critical Fine Art Practice and a Diploma in Photography (1995), and later completed an MA in Fine Art Photography at the London College of Communication (2009). She has trained in shamanic medicine with the Spirit of the Inca School of Shamanic Energy Medicine, where she is also a member of staff, and is a certified TRE (Tension & Trauma Release Exercise) provider.

Her work has been shown internationally. Selected exhibitions include Light Years Ahead: A Survey of Earth Guardianship (John Marchant Gallery, Brighton, and Leicester Gallery, De Montfort University, 2023), Wells Art Contemporary Open, curated by Simon Periton (2022), and Outside In at Shepton Mallet Prison for Somerset Art Weeks (2021). Solo projects include Green Medicine No. 6 in Bruton, Somerset (2023). Her work is held in the British Council Visual Arts Library and in private collections.

Full CV and exhibition history - scroll down

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