Jamieson Pearl (b. 2000, San Francisco), is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, where she also earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Though young, Pearl has already carved out a unique place in the contemporary art scene, known for her intensely detailed and symbolic work that fuses surrealism, anatomy, spiritual diagrams, and dream logic.
Her work exists somewhere between the diagrammatic and the divine — like illustrated maps of inner worlds or psychic ecosystems, blending the clinical precision of medical illustration with a poetic, intuitive sense of composition and meaning. These are not static images; they feel like living systems, pulsing with tension, transformation, and ambiguity.
Pearl’s paintings often depict anatomical elements — hearts, lungs, spines, nervous systems — not as cold scientific objects, but as symbols of emotional, spiritual, or existential states. She layers these forms with delicate linework, muted yet evocative color palettes, and surreal architectural shapes, resulting in compositions that feel meditative, ritualistic, and sometimes uncanny.
Photo by LOLA
Hi Jamison! It’s a pleasure to sit down with you! That’s the first question that I always ask. How does a regular day look like for you in Chicago?
Jamieson: I’m a big sleeper (I require at least 10 hours) and have a habit of staying up until 3 am so I’m always getting a late start on the day and am rarely up before noon except on the days where I need to reup on my bagel supply because my favorite bakery tends to run out quickly. I try to get up around 10 on Wednesdays and Sundays to ensure I acquire my favorite lunch. After I’ve eaten my bagel I am up and ready to paint (Yerba Mate in hand because despite me deep sleep I still require caffeine to ensure my wakefulness (Enlighten Mint is my favorite flavor)), and head over to my studio that’s a tiny room across from my gray futon I spend most of my restful hours sitting in.
Once I get painting it can be hard to stop as I enter this addictive trance like state only remembering to take a break once my stomach is urging for me to cook up an omelet which I then do (always with spinach, feta, and bacon), which, once consumed, I am ready to head back to my yellow herman miller chair to face the canvas. I find that I need to work at least 8 hours a day to feel fully productive, satisfied, and like I’m really working a job like those office rats downtown. During this time, I have YouTube open on my phone where I oscillate between true crime, natural disaster, and shipwreck videos, which, for some reason, puts me at ease more than music ever could (I find myself getting antsy and bored with just a soundtrack assisting my grind).
I’m curious, growing up in San Francisco, what kind of kid were you? What did you enjoy doing, and how did you spend your time?
Jamieson: Oh, I was an awful kid, really angry and mean and lost in a lot of ways, constantly erupting in tantrums towards my parents and getting in trouble for kicking other kids at school. These violent tendencies lead to me getting kicked out of summer camp because I once threw a metal water bottle at a girl’s head after some petty argument about rocks (don’t ask, I am not a petrologist by any means so have no inkling as to where this passion came from on my end). Luckily, I’ve changed my ways and physical altercations are in no means a part of my current lifestyle, but I can still get a bit snappy (verbally) if pushed (so don’t piss me off).
I was also a highly competitive swimmer and had practice around 9 times a week (2 morning practices before school on certain days), and was a child prodigy of sorts. It all came easy to me, and I was always the best (being ranked #1 in the country for a small time period in a certain race for my age group), until I wasn’t, and that hit me hard. It was one of those life lessons I especially value having experienced around 15 or so because not only did it teach me that I wasn’t just innately better than everyone else, it pushed me to pursue something else (that being art). Not everything has to be permanent, and that’s the beautyof life, I think; we can reroute it whenever we want or are forced to, and more often than not, it will not only work out, but end up being the better path in the long run.
I was bullied a lot until I started to get hot and my peers began trying to date instead of tease me so when High School started I began a rebellious phase of doing drugs and having sex (I was always such a nightmare to my parents because despite moving on from my angry stage I was now sneaking around doing all the things parents tell you not to). It’s funny thinking back to this time where I was such a hedonistic individual because in my adult life I’m pretty tame and drug abstinent (I have heart problems which can account for a lot of this avoidance but am still always the go-to stranger that other party goers ask for coke from (I just fall into that vibe I guess (what can I say, I’m just naturally blonde and skinny))); I guess I got all that binge drinking and cocaine snorting out at an early age.
So when did you start painting, and when did you start taking being an artist seriously?
Jamieson: In my Junior year of high school, I transferred from the catholic school I grew to hate (all my friends had either gotten expelled or moved to boarding school) and spent every lunch hour that first year of Junior year in the handicap stall with a Juul and chicken tenders. My rebellious nature gave me a bad reputation amongst the heads of school, who also saw the onset of my sickness (that ended up being the real reason I gave up swimming) as some sort of laziness or excuse to avoid attending class. I wasn’t allowed into any of the AP classes, which crushed me because with the loss of athleticism as my life’s purpose, I was eager to get serious about art.
Luckily, my parents (who, despite my flaws have always been nothing but supportive) agreed to let me transfer to public school, where not only was I able to have a new chance for friendship, but I was also able to enroll in several AP classes (no questions asked), one of those being AP art. I will always give all the credit for my pursuit of art as a career to my teacher at the time, Lauren Bartone, who saw and nurtured my talent. She encouraged me to go to art school and taught me a lot of the fundamentals in terms of painting and conceptualizing that got me to where I am today. We still keep in touch and will never forget that it was she who pushed me to recognize my abilities.
Ok Jamieson, with these next series of questions, I will try to delve into your work as best as possible. So, Your work resemble pixelated digital portraiture and motifs. When did you start developing that style? And why does it resonate so well with you?
Jamieson: It all started in 2023 with a painting that I continue returning to, always questioning if it’s finished or not (It probably is, but has only been seen by those who have stepped into my studio). It is a screenshot from a video of Taylor Momsen (her doing parkour running from the paparazzi in a Nike campaign that for a while was circulating TikTok with users claiming it be Jeffree Star). I really just wanted to capture that natural grit that came withthe low resolution of the video, I wasn’t looking at it as clearly pixelated as much as eerily broken, filtered through lenses and screens.
As I continued making in this style, I became obsessed with the trail of collection that became evident from this distortion. The way that each screenshot and reupload degenerated the original image so it became an archive of its cross-platform history, inevitably becoming further detached from the girl behind the screen with every iteration. This detachment has become essential to me as the subjects and matter of them is very real but becomes digestible and easy to consume as beautiful imagery without such heavy implications (the ones that get it will, and the ones who don’t will just appreciate the art for art’s sake, and I’m ok with that (happy even)), it evokes the emotional flatness of scrolling: voyeurism without intimacy, beauty without context (except for those with a shared emotional archive).
What role does identity — whether personal, gendered, or cultural — play in your work?
Jamieson: Everyone is always asking or assuming that the girls I paint are myself. In a literal way, of course not, but in the ‘I’m also just a pretty girl online who exhibits similar features to the ones on my canvas’ way, they are. But denoting my work as self-portraiture feels lazy (however true it may be). It’s more important that my identity becomes intertwined with my work in multiplicities; my online presence on Instagram and Tumblr feels like an equal part of my overall practice as my paintings. They share the ethos of a curated rawness (that never bleeds), every pixel is as deliberate as every post in forming an overall image of a constructed (hyper-visible and aestheticized) reality.
I taught myself how to be a woman by watching other girls be watched, and I am paying that forward (for I really make art as a homage to the younger girls I’m aware look up to me as I have with my muses. I’ll always appreciate the support from my 18-year-old friends who truly get it more than members of the serious art establishments who get my work on a more technical level). I’m aware I’m opening myself up to objectification, but equally in control of my own narrative, and I see my muses as participating in this construct in the same way. And it wouldn’t feel genuine any other way. You can’t critique the machine from outside it. You have to become prettier than the problem.
The everyday scenes that appear in your work. What’s the inspiration behind them? Like what do you look for when deciding what should grace your canvas?
Jamieson: My studio walls are littered with photos of girls whom I’ve come to collect through an unconscious archive of ‘girl on the internet’ history by being a girl on the internet. I look for beauty, sadness, and familiarity, whether that be through personal identification or a recollection of when this image first graced my screen. The quality is just as important, the pixelation needs to be a genuine aspect rather than a manipulation on my end. I could find the perfect subject and image, but if the quality is good, then I know it just doesn’t workand feels too forced in my end. I don’t want to manipulate more than I already am; there needs to be a rawness to some degree to make something look so effortlessly broken on my end.
Besides just simple photos of girls, I look for images that exemplify the consumption by girls on the internet. I have a photo printed out on my studio wall right now (we’ll see if it ever manages to grace the canvas) of a girls arm with ‘I Love Zayn’ cut into her arm with a razor blade that comes from the #cut4zayn movement that began in 2014 when a photo of him smoking a joint was leaked. There’s something here about sacrificing one’s body for the love of a boy who will never know of their existence beyond blood etched pleas; girlhood crushes tend to have an intensity that literally crushes.
On this same overall point, I was obsessed with doing Columbine paintings for a while, and it wasn’t as much for the event itself as the fandoms that arose from it. Decades past 1999, there are still ‘Columbiners’ scattered across platforms (mainly Tumblr) who idolize Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris in a romanticized way. This group is mainly made up of teenage girls struggling with delinquency, alienation, and an overall dissatisfaction with society. They don’t seem to want to be them as much as they want to date them, with this penetrating idea that they could have saved them. If only the school shooters had a 2015 Tumblr sad girl on their arms, tragedy would become a love story of nihilistic kids. It’s the same overarching idea as #cut4zayn, these girls could be the heroes if given a chance, but instead end up harming their (either mental or physical) well-being as almost a punishment for the fact that they didn’t or cannot.
And the various protagonists…. Who are they?
Jamieson: I like to think of them as a new martyr: the Sad Girl as Savior. I credit Sharon Tate (whose photo hangs on the door of my studio) as the originator of this figure. Someone as beautiful as they are tragic, always existing between divides of ideals; divine but broken, holy but hypersexualized. There’s an underlying theme of abuse, with the negative to the positive of such a divide being at the hands of men who take advantage of such outward beauty, such as Mars Argo (vs Titanic St. Clair), Cory Kennedy (vs Cobra Snake), and Amber Heard (vs Johnny Depp).
And it’s funny because as much as it seems like I’m in full identification with the victim in such circumstances, I’m equally as in tune with the abusers by asserting control through my process. I’m giving women a voice who haven’t asked for it, perpetuating an image without consent that inherently mutes the agency I seek to give. I think of Anna Freud’s essay ‘Identification with the Aggressor’ from her book ‘The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence’ in this process, with her idea that,“ the moment the criticism is internalized, the offence is externalized. (118)”
Any specific topics or themes that are important for you to document?
Jamieson: Expanding on the previous question of who I’m documenting, there is something about the ambiguity of truth with such cases that really intrigues me. It’s this idea that, for however much research I may go into on any topic, and however strongly I feel like I take one side over the other, there is never a clear truth I can take away. Everything I read has gone through layers of translation through the media, with PR agencies accepting money to run certain stories that just continue to obscure reality. Like with The Heard vs Depp case, it is well known now that Johnny spent thousands (allegedly tens to hundreds of thousands) to smear Amber, which obviously worked in gaining his support by media onlookers. And I love Amber, she more than most of my muses has become like a saint to me (I’m still unsure as to all the reasonings I find such deep connection), but as much as I say I’m on her side and believe her allegations towards her ex partner, there is a doubt that penetrates because I know I can’t and never will have the answers as to what really happened.
I wasn’t there, and as much as a scroll through court transcriptions to find answers, there will always be a lawyer in the corner guiding the plaintiff or defendant on what to say and how. Nothing is unfiltered; even reality TV is edited before reaching our screens. It’s like with the show Survivor and the concept of Edgic (a combination of the words editing and logic). Edgic is basically an analysis system where devoted fans keep track of the tone and visibility amongst contestants to compare against previous winners in order to calculate who will win the current season. For as much as it is a game of chance as to who will win Survivor, it’s the job of the editing team to go in after to ensure this contestant partakes in a hero’s journey that will appease the audience.
Are you influenced by internet culture, surveillance, or how we consume images online? If so, how?
Jamieson: Yes.
There’s a vulnerability in your figures, but also a kind of control in how you frame and pixelate them. What role does intimacy play in your work — and are you more interested in seduction, protection, confrontation, or something else entirely?”
Jamieson: It’s all of the above, but also the inherent contradiction, as I’ve mentioned before, that encapsulates such ideas. It’s like I’m driving a car and taking my hands off the wheel, crashing, but finding peace in knowing now no one can chastise me for being late (for as much as I am a victim of circumstance, I’m still at fault). I’m not healing as much as I am moodboarding the injury. No one wants to pay for healing anyway, they want trauma they can hang on a wall. It’s all detached intimacy, maybe just the aesthetic of intimacy througha screen that is then inherently devoid of attachment.
We all want to feel connected, I mean, in painting the girls I do, I feel a deep emotional bond between us, but it’s all one-sided and honestly delusional to think the time I’ve spent with flattened personas is real. I’m in a room with all these girls and am the only one existing in reality within the studio walls. These girls exist somewhere, elsewhere, but I’m not privy to that as I don’t think I should be, it feels like that’s sorta the point.
But there is a trust between us (myself and the 8.5×11 portraits taped to my wall), because as much power as I hold over them with my paintbrush as a knife to the throat, they rule my mind and look down upon me from their tower of internet iconism. It’s almost as if we are fighting for control. I inevitably win in the end when the painting hangs finished within gallery walls, but they do just as much when I decide to take down their image and hide it within a manila folder. It’s almost as if they’ve finally run away from being chained up in my cramped studio space, free from having to be critiqued as an object by the art society.
Can you walk me through your creative process from beginning to end result?
Jamieson: Whenever I come across an image that feels like something I would like to paint, I add it to a folder (I’ve gone through a few, usually starting a new one every year or so once the previous one has reached around 500 screenshots and starts to feel unbearable to scroll or stale). I sit with this folder and sporadically decide to print some images out if they continue to call to me. I blue-tape the printed out images onto my studio wall and really just wait for them to call to be painted. Not every screenshot makes it out of the folder, and not every printed out version makes it onto the canvas; sitting with the image for an extended period of time helps me to filter out what is actually sparking something within me. I think it helps me to build some sort of attachment and familiarity, they become something I’ve lived with and surrounded myself with as I sit in my workspace painting away.
I won’t give out every last detail of how I get things done because mystery is equally as important as explanation, but I reference the printed out picture as I paint, basing my pallet on this rather than the digital version as I feel it gives some sort of hazy washed out quality that removes it from the screen. I’m a little crazy when it comes to building out a palette, as I prefer to mix everything before painting into perfectly equal splotches in a grid-like fashion (I guess this way of thinking penetrates my every movement). I will say they are pretty beautiful, probably as much as a piece of art as the finished product on the canvas they are working to complete, which I work on in thin layers, slowly building up the opacity.
Can you also tell me about your use of symbolism?
Jamieson: A lot relies on beauty standards, mainly the ones I feel I fall into, and I guess the mythology of such ideals. Thinness has become an attribute I tend to rely on, honestly, in life and in my work. We’re told it’s wrong to take pride in being skinny, yet anorexic teens will always exist to strive to such a standard with plenty of muses to fuel their abstinence towards carbs. I wouldn’t get the same attention I do for my appearance if my body didn’t look the way it does (I’m 5’11 and 115 pounds), and however toxic I may be told it is, to feel satisfied I can fit into a size XS, I still am. Diet culture to achieve what the media prescribes as the ideal female form isn’t going away anytime soon, and I don’t feel like wanting perfection in such a way should be villainized, there’s a power in this conformity that I’ll gladly benefit from. It’s not like I’m creating it; at the end of the day, I’m falling victim to a system beyond my control, using it to achieve what I want.
Originally, I focused on blondes (except now this doesn’t seem to be as important to me as I no longer get highlights, and despite being a natural blonde, it is dirty at best and comes off as ginger or brunette in different lighting or season). The brutality of blondes really piqued my interest, as they are rarely the final girl in slasher movies, mainly because the starkness of blood-streaked blonde is too striking to ignore. Even Hitchcock said, “Blondes make the best victims. They’re like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.”
It all comes back to this idea of beauty and conformity to such standards as the villain, something we are told not to focus on, because it doesn’t matter as much as what’s on the inside. And that’s true to an extent, but to think we don’t buy books when the cover art speaks to us denies the importance of visual literacy. I’m pretty agnostic when it comes to religion, but the closest thing I’ve found to god is aiming to achieve beauty. It is as sacrificial as the lamb, and even Jesus finds himself sculpted from bronze and painted by the greats (it is undeniable that painting in itself falls into the same mode of achieving visual perfection; I sand my gessoed canvases down to smoothness with the same brain that exfoliates my skin). There’s a reason churches and mosques are some of the most exquisitely built structures in our world; glamour is enlightenment. Beauty is a weapon, I’m just not pretending it isn’t loaded.
How do you approach color?
Jamieson: I love a muted palette. Something about saturation almost scares me, and I find that mixing with tertiary and very white based paints is where I feel the safest. I tried to unpack this recently and have attributed it to growing up in the foggy climate of the San Francisco area, where landscapes are always blanketed with this white haze. It’s one of those things where, however much we try to escape it, the climate that surrounds us in our primitiveyears always finds a way of creeping back in. I’m a product of my environment; what else can I say?
So with what we just talked about, what are you hoping to convey?
Jamieson: That’s hard for me to say as I think my main goal is to implicate the viewer. If you’re uncomfortable, good. If you think I’m the villain, even better. I’m not here to resolve that contradiction. I see myself as an archivist of sorts and am really just here to lay it out through layers of paint, you get to live with your reaction.
Outside of art, what’s something you’re obsessed with right now—maybe a hobby, a show, or even a food—that keeps you grounded or inspired?
Jamieson: My rabbit, Puddles. He is truly the love of my life and spends every night winding down with him nuzzled beside me.
Ok Jamieson, now to something totally different. In a parallel universe who would you be? and what would you be doing?
Jamieson: I’ve always believed I was a reincarnation of Cleopatra (since fourth grade when I had to write my first essay and chose her as the subject). So, ruling Egypt and sneaking off with Mark Antony.
Can you tell me a story about a time when a connection with someone had a big impact on you?
Jamieson: When I was around 16 or 17 I did the early college program for the college I ended up attending (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago) my teacher (Peter Fagundo, who I ended up taking several classes with and utilizing as an advisor once at SAIC, and is still amentor I look up to greatly) took us to go see an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary art in Chicago called ‘I was raised on the internet’.
Not only did it introduce me to Amelia Ulman and her Instagram performance series (the book ‘Excellence and Perfection’ sits on my coffee table as I write this), but also to Petra Cortright. It was a video of her in all white with animated rose petals falling from the screen (‘Bridal Shower’ from 2013) that started me on an obsessive research spiral into her work. A couple of years ago, I got the notification that she had followed me back on Instagram, and as soon as I got the courage to send a DM letting her know how much I appreciated her work, and that her recognition of mine meant a lot. She told me how much she loved a painting I did of Hailey Lujan (the Army PSYOP E-girl).
She posted something in 2024 about visiting Chicago, and I immediately responded how much I would love to meet in person. It ended up being that she was in town for a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art (‘The Living End: Painting and OtherTechnologies’) where a large piece of hers was on display. She invited me to come with her and her husband (Marc Harowitz) for the opening reception, where I ended up getting an intimate walkthrough of the entire exhibition alongside them and going to dinner at some Irish establishment afterwards. It was the couple’s 10 year anniversary on that night so I got to hear the story of how they met and came to fall in love (which I’m just now realizing is a perfect callback to that first piece of hers I encountered).
Petra and I exchanged stories of our early years on the internet, with out 10 year age gap displaying the frivolity and simultaneous permanence of online spaces (Tumblr to me was Live Journal to her) and hugged goodbye that night with an exclamation of love for being girls of the internet where not only do we pull artistic inspiration from, but find connection like we did with each other. It was all such a full-circle moment, and I am forever grateful to have her in my life. When idols become friends, it’s equally surreal and reassuring.
Anybody you look up to?
Jamieson: The birds. I love birdwatching, and I’m in the perfect place at the perfect time to do so; Chicago in the spring is peak migratory season.
What motivates you?
Jamieson: I could die at any moment, so I just hope I’ve done enough that my legacy will live on without me.
How would you describe a perfect day?
Jamieson: I don’t think I can answer that; the perfect day would be something beyond my comprehension. Something impulsive and beautiful that comes out of left field, like meeting the love of my life and getting married at a Vegas chapel on a whim. But that would probably end in a divorce, so I guess something like that without a contract involved.
Alright Jamieson, I always ask these two questions at the end of an interview. The first is. What’s your favorite movie(s) and why?
Jamieson: Elephant: I was shown this movie on a first date that lasted around 18 hours with a boy I never saw again. He said he knew I would love it (which I did, but fuck you) and we held hands in a hotel room as two boys shot up a school. Ms. 45: Zoe Lund is one of my favorite tragic heroines (as much as heroin was her favorite drug) and I find the idea of using a pistol to kill off your rapists a satisfying and morally challenging idea. As much as you want to root for her, you come to realize you’re cheering on a serial killer, and despite how guilty these victims are, they become victims with her actions. It’s an interesting study on the use of power to overcome trauma, the idea that the only way to heal is to become the villain.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane: I have a deep love (bordering on obsession) with Amber Heard, who stars in this movie. It’s a perfect rendition of one of those old-school teen slashers mixed with early 2000s nostalgia that feels fun and dangerous. There’s an amazing twist at the end that I won’t spoil because I think everyone should watch this movie. The only issue (that just further piqued my interest) is that it’s nearly impossible to find. I have the DVD copy, and it’s the only surefire way I know besides a VPN to obtain the masterpiece. It’s the only movie I know of that has such strict ownership as it used to be on archive.org and 123movies, but has since been taken down; something fishy is definitely going on with it, which just confirms its importance in my mind.
The second is. What song(s) are you currently listening to the most right now?
Jamieson: I’ve been taking a break from music. I’m trying to read more books and watch more true crime documentaries.