Meet Jessica Pidcock | Mystic Realism Painter and Teacher

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jessica Pidcock and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jessica, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I’ve always been interested in being an entrepreneur and having that independence and control over my career – I desire a high level of autonomy. Art has been my primary interest for most of my life so it was a very natural goal for me to want to make money from my work so that I could spend that much more time focusing on it. The longer I did this and the more avenues I ventured down, the more purpose and passion I found in sharing my work and connecting with others thru creativity, so it is no longer purely a monetary pursuit which feels fantastic.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My artistic journey is very much tied to my own emotional, spiritual, and mental evolution as my work is very personal. I was very focused on painting abstractly in college and the years after, only painting recognizable subject matter to try to sell at shows. My work transformed when I underwent my own extreme transformation after becoming a mother and moving halfway across the country. Doing so opened me up spiritually and I began to channel very clear and intense energies into my work in ways I had not been able to tap into before, or had even been aware was possible. It’s been amazing to be a vessel for creativity to flow thru instead of forcing something that felt much less natural, with the goal of creating images with mass appeal. I also found very little professional success until I tapped into this much truer, stronger vein of creativity. I’ve always taught and done commissions as my primary artistic income, and I still do, but those also have slowly become more meaningful and profound. My commissions are now more likely to be something I actually want to paint as people see my personal work and it’s higher level of skill and intrigue. I’ve also been given the opportunity to teach a wider variety of classes, such as ones I’ve invented that include content I’m even more passionate about than simple skills or paint-and-sip parties. These classes (as well as my personal work) blend artistic skills with spiritual and emotional processing methods, including but not limited to astrology, color and imagery symbolism, and even tarot. They all seem to feed off of each other beautifully.
My largest logistical hurdle now is being a mother to a child that I homeschool, as that leaves me with very little time of my own. We also recently moved back to the East coast and are in the house hunting process, which promises more transitions and time management challenges (on top of uprooting the professional footholds I had in CA). This is a constant balance that I’m sure I will continue to work on for many years to come but it also feeds my work in it’s own way.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’m currently in Northern VA, pretty close to DC, so I’m sure I would take them to some of the museums there – the National Portrait Gallery as well as the Corcoran Museum would be a must. There is also the Lorton Workhouse arts center near me that was once a maximum security prison from DC and was abandoned for years. They eventually turned it into an arts facility with studios and galleries where there used to be cell blocks. The Torpedo Factory in Alexandria is also fantastic and has great restaurants next door on the water. My favorite place to dine is definitely Filomena Ristorante in DC so I would take my friend there as a grand finale to the trip.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I learned a lot at SCAD during my time in undergrad, and I look back at my time there very fondly. I also attended a school in Delaware (DCAD) where I spent many hours honing my drawing skills, giving me a nice solid foundation. However, my work really expanded and took on new meaning when I became a mother and moved to California, where I was able to explore ideas and myself in ways I never had before. Motherhood filled me with purpose, life, and love while California gave me access to self-knowledge and healing modalities (primarily thru an amazing woman named Magali Morales) that were perviously out of my reach. The combination served to create the right conditions in me to tap into a very profound place artistically, and I watched my work transform. I have also had amazing experiences with some of the organizations I’ve taught with, including the Painter’s Pot in CO and the Cabrillo Extension Program in Santa Cruz. Both taught me so much about how I want to operate as a business person, as well as how to be a contributing part of my community.

My parents have supported my art since I was a child – they signed waivers for me to take figure drawing classes in high school and helped pay for my college tuition, as well as supported any business ventures I needed help with. They’ve always only encouraged me and thats made a world of difference.

Website: JessicaPidcock.com

Instagram: instagram.com/JessicaPidcockArt

Facebook: facebook.com/JessicaPidcockArt

Other: tiktok @jessicapidcock_art