Current Exhibition
Mt. San Jacinto College Art Gallery Presents
Jess Minckley, Paper Stories
January 12 - February 12, 2026
Reception: Thursday, February 12, 4 - 6 pm
The MSJC Art Gallery is proud to present a special solo exhibition by Jess Minckley, Paper Stories. Jess Minckley is a Los Angeles artist, writer, educator, art therapist, and curator. Their paintings explore psychological themes, including trauma, grief, loneliness, and betrayal. These works mine emotional states that many keep private due to social stigma and internalized shame. Minckley draws from the concepts of art psychotherapy in their work. Using art as a metaphor, one may transmute suffering and make its universal experience tangible, legible, and/or beautiful.
This exhibition programming is generously supported by The MSJC Foundation.
Large watercolor paintings on paper depict people tumbling through evocative, colored landscapes- wrestling with forces like love, pain, loss, and gravity. Alongside these are small, abstract watercolors, made on yellowing pages of self-help books the artist finds in thrift stores & repurposes.
In one larger work, two nude figures are seen suspended in a vibrant magenta forest. Surrounded by uncoiling ferns and dappled light, the figures glow, frozen in the landscape. One figure is turning upside down, bracing her feet on a tree. The other is “her shadow self, her keeper,” holding her body. She is covered in ink scratches that obscure text tattooed on her body, leaving only her face and hands bare. This evocative interaction, signaling a trust fall or a struggle, simultaneously.
The book pages are quieter, humbler in scale, but bring viewers close to read their text and let their abstract, painted images wash over them. These “secondhand hopes”- books that were once the promise of solutions, now discarded, refer to the title of the series “Epigraph/Epitaph”. These title and epigraph pages become substrates for coded linework and color palettes, telling a nonverbal story using only an artist’s ineffable lexicon. When grouped, both types of drawing create a phenomenological narrative of emotional process. “You Just Don’t Understand”, “Our Inner Conflict”, and simply “Was” allow for interpretation, but begin to “read” more like a story when grouped together.
Using watery, volatile media to create visceral images, and found text to transcribe silent, heartbreaking experiences, Minckley’s work gently reaches into your life experiences to ask timeless questions about what it means to live and feel. At our current moment in history, there is much to grieve, but not many places to put the rage, fear, or hopelessness. Minckley’s work shows us a way to make suffering beautiful.
Jess Minckley is a licensed counselor and Board-Certified Registered Art Therapist (ATR-BC). They hold an MA in Applied Psychology from Antioch University, Seattle, WA, and an MFA and BFA from Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA.
Their writing is being published in the Journal of Individual Psychology (2026), and two Routledge books on art therapy with queer populations (2026/7). Their nonprofit Art Therapy for All has a mission to make art-based mental health services, education, and community-based art accessible to anyone.
They have had solo Exhibitions at Carl Berg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Light & Wire Gallery; and ExoProject, Chicago, IL. Their work has been in group exhibitions internationally including at L.A. Louver, Human Resources, Angles Gallery, Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, the University of Southern California (USC), Fellows of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (FOCALA).