jesspetley.com 
JESS PETLEY
[Email] jnpetley@ntlworld.com
[Instagram] @joobaloob.s



BIO

Jess Petley is  an artist and illustrator, primarily creating works on paper in biro, coloured pencil, gel pens, pastels and watercolour.
Her practice  is inspired by the aesthetic culture of‘girliness’: notebooks filled with glitter, doodles scrawled on the margins of a of a page, gossip magazines, fluffy diaries.
Her style is defined by delicate, illustrative forms, constructing a make-believe world seeped in nostalgia.  
Mirroring the language of journalling through drawing, she dissects and ruminates on emotions and memories, articulating what she cannot with words.  

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CV
EDUCATION 

[2020-2024] 
BA (Hons) Fine Art- First Class
Newcastle University

EXPERIENCE 

Writing & Illustration Club Facilitator [2025-26] Longbenton High School

Arts and Craft Club Faciliator [2025]
Longbenton High School

Bartlett Crits Co-organiser [2024]
Newcastle University

Art Cafe Co-Runner [2023-2024]
Newcastle University 

Ilustrator  [2022-2024]
Live Theatre

Artist’s Assistant [2022–2023]
Newcastle City Council  

Illustrator  [2022]
Simply Stories

Performer [2022]
Tour De Moon

Arts & Crafts Instructor [2022]
Barracudas Activity Day Camps 


EXHIBITIONS
> ‘Come to the Art Show - Flowershop’ 
    Black Swan  (2024)
> ‘Free Range, Annual Creative Graduate Showcase’     Truman Brewery (2024)
> ‘Newcastle Fine Art Degree show’ (2024)
    King Edward VII building 
> ‘Uncanny’
    Bottleworks (2022)


Works. 
[click on images to zoom]

[ILLUSTRATION][SERIES]Phrasebook
(In Progress)

1.  Cutting corners
2.  Bite off more than you can chew watercolour, ink, gel pen, coloured pencil on recycled paper
220 x 290 mm
2025




[ILLUSTRATION]If you can’t beat them

watercolour on paper 
297 x 420 mm
2025





[SERIES]Top Secret Diary


  [left to right]

1.  ‘The Spider Grew and Grew’
2.  ‘Tiny flowers were blooming everywhere I looked’ 
3.  ‘Playtime’
4.  ‘First we’ll play on the swings, then we’ll have some squash and         bisciuts’ 
5.  ‘This is where I live’ water colour, colour pencil, coloured marker on newsprint. 
500 x 750 mm 
2024
     




                       




[SERIES]Lots of little drawings on lots of little paper


  [left to right]

1.  ‘..when the face leaks into the looking glass like water into             sand’
2.  ‘sunflower’
3.  ‘flirting’
4.  ‘kiss kiss kisss’
5.  ‘reach for the stars’
6.  ‘he loves me not, he loves me not, he...’
7.  ‘Paper snoflake on a doll on a plastic chair’ 
8.  ‘I cannot even be myself or know what I am’
9.  ‘this secret i will..’
10. ‘she slept by me.. tiny flowers’
11. ‘weeehooo!’
12. ‘socks’
13. ‘hug’
14. ‘...keep forever’
15. ‘unloving light’
16. ‘I really really really miss my cats’
17. ‘the grass is greener’
18. ‘hide and seek’
19. ‘darker tonight’
20. ‘To tooth fairy’

21. ‘My big lovely baby!’                                     



                          







mixed media on newsprint/ sugar paper
all 122 x 186 mm 
2024



















oil pastel on sugar paper
295 x 420 mm
2023




 ‘Me and ... want to go home now’      coloured pencil on sugar paper
220 x 335 mm
2023


[SERIES]‘Oh no I cried so much I made a made a magical river again!’ 
coloured pencil, biro on sugar paper
100 x 100 mm
2023


- Considering how sadness and tears can act as a comfort blanket




[SERIES]’Sofa drawings’                                                      

1.  Good
2.  Bad
soft pastel on sugar paper
both 595 x 840 mm 
2023


- Comparing two very different relationships by a specfic memory of a time we lay on the sofa together.

‘The gunk from the sink is trying to kill me!’oil on canvas
122 x 122 cm
2023


-  Considering the magic within the mundane, imagining a chore as a physical monster.


[SERIES]’Walk home’
 coloured pencil on paper
each 150 x 260 mm
2023


- Exploring the haunting magic of suburban areas through the light of an iPhone SE.



[SERIES]‘Hold hands’
pencil on newsprint
each 180 x 250 mm
2023


- How the mind shifts through walking and the role physical touch plays in nostalgia.

‘Always follow cats’oil and tissue paper on wooden board
203 x 355 mm
2023

‘Buisnessman’ oil on canvas 
75 x 100 cm 
2022

- fear of the ordinary.