Growing up poor, Jess Wathen began drawing as an inexpensive way to pass time. Pencils were cheap so that’s what he used. When he ran out of paper, he’d find scraps of wood, cardboard or whatever his teachers—who recognized talent in him—could spare to give away.
Wathen had an undeniable gift, but after high school, he felt he had to put his pencils away.
Pointers, oil on Ampersand clayboard, 5 x 5"
“Because of life. Reality strikes and then you’ve got to focus on trying to pay the bills or choose a career that’s going to yield an income,” Wathen remembers thinking. “Secretly, the only thing I knew I wanted to pursue was an art career, but it felt daunting, and without ever committing, I could never fail.”
During his late teens and early 20s, Wathen worked at Domino’s. He drifted, painting houses, washing windows. He held warehouse jobs. Still, he couldn’t shake drawing. In reality, his desire to make art only intensified as he continued suppressing it. 
Ember, oil on clayboard, 8 x 8"
“It’s a nagging urge; I have to create. It may sound cliché, [but] I can’t get away from it,” Wathan says. “I’ve tried to put it down and stop for long periods of time. I’ve taken very long, extended hiatuses for many years, and then I wind up coming back to it.”
Wathen’s turning point came in his late 20s during a chance visit to a gallery near his home in east Tennessee. He was amazed to find the work on display no better than what he knew he could make. And at the price it was selling for, he recognized an opportunity to earn a sustainable living pursuing the passion he’d been denying himself.
Vermillion, oil on clay board, 8 x 8"
“Immediately, a fire was lit,” Wathen says. “I didn’t feel challenged, but rather competitive since I was confident in my ability—if this guy could do it, I could do it too! So, I set out to prove it.”
And he did, earning representation with that very same gallery for his hyper-realistic graphite portraits.
Expanding his repertoire, Wathen has evolved his career into highly stylized oil paintings of wildlife, leaving portraiture behind—or has he?
While not drawn from nature or strictly representational, Wathen paints his animals with the care and sensitivity he’d give any human sitter. Like a great portraitist, he brings out his subjects’ unique character traits. He paints owls, foxes and rabbits as equals of people, each with its own personality no less fully formed than a person’s. They have curiosity, perspective and self-awareness.
Rabbit, oil on Artefex panel, 8 x 8"Wathen paints portraits of animals.
He does so with a purposeful construction of paint where brushwork and individual artistic choices are clearly visible, “very carefully placing these interesting, thick marks, arranged [so that] by the end of the process it looks like it was painted quickly, without any care,” he explains.
Wathen’s latest wildlife paintings will be on view during a show opening April 13 at Abend Gallery in Denver. —
Abend Gallery
1261 Delaware Street, Suite 2 • Denver, CO 80204
(303) 355-0950 • www.abendgallery.com
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