Jessica Brilli

Jessica Brilli (b. 1977) is a Massachusetts-based painter whose work excavates the vernacular of everyday life, the motel sign at midnight, the pool at noon, the car parked in winter light, finding in these images something at once familiar and irretrievably gone. She holds a BFA in Painting from the University of Rhode Island and a certificate in graphic design from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. After nearly two decades at Harvard University, she transitioned to painting full-time in 2021 and was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant that same year.

Working primarily from photographic slides sourced from antique shops and yard sales, Brilli builds images that move between cinematic clarity and emotional ambiguity. Her figures, swimmers, skiers, watchers, are present but not revealed. Her architectural works hold their light without explanation. Her objects,the chair, the car, the typewriter, carry the weight of lives lived just outside the frame. The subject is never really the subject. What remains is a particular quality of afternoon that belongs to everyone and no one.