Currently on view at QUEUE Gallery, LA-based artist Jamieson Pearl speaks with Miami writer and Q editiorial intern Cristina Ameller about Pearl’s practice. Pearl is featured in the two-person exhibition Evidence of Evolution alongside Miami sculptor Fharid LaTorre on view until May 30th, 2026.
Jamieson Pearl (b. 2000, San Francisco, California) is an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Her focus is primarily oil on linen paintings with a distinctive pixelated style that evokes the detached intimacy and ambiguity of truth that comes with the digital feminine persona. 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. There is a certain darkness in the play between agency, victim hood, rebellion, and beauty that comes through with the detailed distortion she uses to execute the ‘sad girl as savior’. She is also a Libra.
CA: You grew up in San Francisco, went to undergrad in Chicago, and later moved to Los Angeles, which is where you’re based now. How has your environment in LA impacted your practice, if at all? Do you sense your work evolving or pulling in a new direction?
JP: I definitely belong in LA. Everything feels like it's starting to open up in the best way. I’m much more distracted (there are parties, romances and new friends, aplenty that have required my presence outside the studio), but I find these distractions just as essential as the time toiling away in my yellow Herman Miller chair (one of the few things I brought with me from Chicago along with my easel) under my Ikea spotlight in a corner of my art deco tiled apartment, small short brush in hand (it’s probably 2am). I’m moving on to a new series completely devoid of both pixels and figures which I guess can in part be attributed to LA as much as just a general sense of needing to move on. It’s the same pull that urged me to move in the first place; a new chapter just feels inevitable.
I’ve also been writing more, recently having published my first piece in my friends magazine ‘The Big One’. I painted the front and back cover as well, so, of course I’ll plug it. It’s funny how it all worked out as my friends Gabby Sones and Johanna Stone) who run the publication reached out requesting I painted a piece of paper that used to hang in my studio (and have somehow mentioned in every interview; Sharon Tate and a soldier paired together on a sheet of lined paper) as they had seen me post it on instagram with some caption claiming I would never paint it. But now that I’m in LA I can feel her ashes becoming the ground as I walk around the Hollywood Reservoir.
....Expanding feels good. I identify with being a painter but I don’t want that to be my only form of expression, being boxed in is one of my greatest fears, which is part of why moving on from the pixels for now is essential in my evolving practice.
CA: I read in a past interview that you have a wall full of reference photos, bridging you to the women you paint. How do you determine what makes it to your archive and what doesn't? Is it intuitive, strategic, something else completely?
JP: Probably a combination of all, but intuition definitely leads, I think the rest follows or is already ingrained in the intuitive pull. I don’t like to think too much about my choices or I would never end up making a decision; my Libratic tendencies are strong.
CA: Your paintings are read as emotional systems rather than linear narratives, focusing on the “Sad Girl as Savior”. Do you ever start a painting of a woman that you don't fully understand emotionally yet, and recognize her more through the process?
JP: I don’t think I ever do or can fully understand the women I paint. I can try to, but, at the end of the day, no matter what, I am just transferring my perception and emotions onto them. I don’t believe the act of painting can give me much of a greater insight into anyone besides myself since it is such a meditative and solitude activity. It feels ignorant to claim understanding of people or situations I only have a contaminated (by layers of translation and media) view of. It honestly may go the other way around; the initial connection that draws me to the woman I paint gets muddled through each layer of paint.
My pull away from figures at the moment feels rooted in the disconnect I've gathered by engaging with such real and clear identities. At this point I’m aiming to harness something more personal yet broadly relatable to the same subject matter and audience I make about and for.
CA: You’ve described Sharon Tate as an origin point for your inclination around depicting hypersexualized martyr figures. Do you see yourself preserving history with each painting, or are you actively reshaping how figures like her are remembered?
JP: I can’t decide if I should answer both or neither. I think that this notion holds me as having a lot of power and responsibility over the figures I paint that I prefer not to claim. I’d rather act as a mirror and put that job on the consumer. To have a clear idea or motive feels like it dampens my work as the convoluted message tends to bring out a breadth of responses I find to be more engaging than a simple and clear cut purpose.
CA: Your work engages with the internet's rapid circulation of images, including those that are controversial. You’ve said the work isn't intended to normalize this behavior, but rather call it out. What aspects of those images feel most urgent for you to address?
Jamieson Pearl at home in LA, images by Anna-Rose Gassot .
JP: I’m interested in the things that I find beautiful or interesting or any adjective to describe something pleasant in the objective wrong. The point where I’m fighting myself because the image is so great but the context murkily on the edge of maybe too far is where I feel most inspired.
But don’t get me wrong, it’s not just all controversy, violence, or perversion for the sake of it. If there wasn't something relatable I wouldn’t bother engaging. My goal at this point feels like it is to address normalcy and pose the question of the moral quandaries rather than claim to have the answers.
I hate thinking of myself as some sort of activist. In all honesty, I find my position to be too ever changing to claim I even really know what I’m painting about half the time. This feels like the wrong answer, but it’s the truth.
CA: As one of the first generations to come of age online, in constant search of how identity can be formed or felt through it, we develop a critical, maybe even crippling, awareness of it over time. Do you see painting as participating in that space, or does it function more as a form of critique?
JP: Both. I can’t deny that my presence on the internet has granted me a lot in terms of exposure of my art to the people who identify with it. I’ve stated before that my work is for the younger versions of myself I see everyday scattered through my feed, and my work circulating amongst them is much more lively to meet their eyes than on a gallery wall. My work tends to need much more explanation of context to the typical gallery crowd while young girls online will comment something indicating an immediate recognition. At the same time, I find social media to be one of the main trigger points of anxiety in my day to day life (I know this sounds annoying and pathetic, but I think it’s true for more people than would like to admit) and am hyper aware of how my self perception as a girl on Instagram since the age of 13 has been severely negatively impacted.
Both are there, because both are true. The gray area is beautiful.
Cristina Ameller is an artist and musician based in Miami, Florida. Active within South Florida’s music scene, she performs as a drummer with several local bands while also working closely with QUEUE Gallery x Q Magazine as a curatorial and editorial assistant. Her multidisciplinary practice moves between visual culture and music often centering communication and community engagement.
