Jesse Edwards (artist)

Jesse Edwards
Born	Jesse Arthur Edwards 1977
Alma mater	Seattle Academy of Realist Art
Occupation	Painter
Years active	1990 -
Home town	Hayden Lake, Idaho

Jesse Edwards (born 1977) is a professional American fine art oil painter, graffiti artist, and ceramicist born in Hayden Lake, Idaho. He works and lives in Seattle and New York City. Edwards is a distinguished member of the Mystic Sons of Morris Graves.

Jesse's beginnings in art started with graffiti, which he began practicing as a youth growing up in Snohomish, WA. He has since traveled from Seattle to the East Coast and Spain, leaving his mark along the way.

Edwards, who likes to refer to his graffiti as installation art, tends toward figurative representations of celebrities, friends, and self-portraits. “I like pictures,” says Edwards, “you don't have to be graffiti-literate to read pictures.

In separate works, dead celebrities Anna Nicole Smith and rapper Tupac Shakur are depicted with children in tender embraces, evoking something like a streetwise Mary Cassatt. When asked how his work is perceived by other graffiti artists, Edwards boasts, “They love it. They flip.”

Jesse graduated from Snohomish High School, after which he spent one year studying the art of the Old Masters in Seattle's public libraries. In 1999, he was accepted into Cornish College of the Arts on a Nellie Scholarship. Cornish later threw him out of school for verbally abusing a professor. About being kicked out of Cornish, Edwards said, “I knew they wouldn't like what I had to say, but I figured I would go out with a bang.”

Edwards went on to study at the Gage Academy (then called the Seattle Academy of Realist Art), where he was offered a second chance in the form of another scholarship. Edwards stayed for four years.

Edwards' outwardly thuggish persona and high-profile antics are well-known attributes of his public image. In 2009, Edwards was considered for the BRAVO reality art TV show, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.

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