The weather is nice and staying home is hard. We get it. But thanks to Jess Phoenix, you can enjoy spring throughout the entire year. Based in Seattle, the illustrator and surface designer specializes in florals and vibrant, almost neon, colors. Her designs, eye-popping to say the least, can be found on anything from stationery and book covers to embroidery and ceramics.
“My work emerged from a desire to produce art as bright and as vibrant as I wanted,” explained Phoenix in an interview with Papirmass. “I love my day job, but sometimes I’m told to change my colors so they ‘don’t vibrate so much.’ I WANT my art to vibrate!”
Funnily enough, her choice to illustrate mainly, if not exclusively, flowers is a practical one. “I choose to paint flowers simply because they are an excellent vehicle for exploring color,” she says. According to Phoenix, most of the flowers and leaves are imagined and as such, provide a vehicle for her vibrant color stories.
“I’m curious about color,” she admits, “which makes me want to explore it and ‘get creative’ with it. Everyone has something they’re curious about, so I think everyone has that innate potential to explore that curiosity and in turn, be creative.”
