San Diego Artist on Rebuilding Herself Through Art – Creative Tea Podcast
This episode of Creative Tea Podcast brought together co-hosts Steffi Reyes-Thomas and Ella (Matra) Napata with Jess Angelica, a San Diego-based artist and muralist. Ella (Matra) have known Jess for roughly seven years, since Jess’s time as a practicing artist at the Art Hub in Barrio Logan. Raised in Escondido and now a fixture in San Diego’s art community, Jess works across charcoal, pen, pencil, and murals, often centered on female figures and quiet, personal moments. In this conversation, she opens up about starting over in her late twenties, and shares some hot tea on San Diego’s art scene.
Quick Takes
Art Rooted in Personal Experience: Jess draws almost exclusively from her own emotions and daily life, heartbreak, growth, and beauty. Channeling it through portraits and female figures rather than external influences or trends.
Her Hot Tea on the Art Scene: Jess calls out what she sees as a cliquey, repetitive local art show circuit, where the same artists and the same work get recycled. Sometimes because it’s trendy rather than because it reflects genuine lived experience.
A Life Reset at 27: After the end of an eight-year relationship, Jess rebuilt her identity and creative path from scratch, eventually finding her way to Chicano Park and deciding to stay.
Charcoal as Current Focus: Jess is currently deep into charcoal work, experimenting with stroke technique and fine pencil detail as she pushes her signature style further.
Portraits, Beauty, and Personal Experience
Jess described her creative process as intentionally insulated from outside noise. She focuses on what she’s personally feeling or experiencing, whether that’s heartbreak, growth, or simply an everyday moment worth capturing. Her work is best known for a signature style of drawing women’s faces, striking enough that Ella (Matra) got one of Jess’s freestyle portraits tattooed on their thigh at Jess’s artist residency in University Heights, under the mentorship of Chicano Park co-founder Mario Torero. Jess’s prints have also found their way into homes as far as the Philippines, a detail that earned her a lighthearted “international artist” title on the podcast.
Hot Tea on San Diego’s Art Show Scene
Jess’s hot tea centers on what she describes as a cliquey, exhausting sameness across San Diego’s art shows, photography scenes, and creative mediums broadly. Her concern isn’t with documenting Chicano culture itself, which she considers valid and important for those genuinely embedded in it, but with artists who document it because it’s expected, trendy, or likely to generate more views, rather than because it reflects their own story. Steffi echoed the sentiment, noting how easy it becomes for curators to repeatedly select familiar names and familiar work, effectively creating art for an insular circle rather than for a broader audience.
Starting Over at 27
Jess shared the personal turning point behind her current path: coming out of an eight-year relationship in her late twenties forced her to rebuild her sense of identity from the ground up. Rather than following a set plan, she made a series of small choices. First exploring traditional art galleries, which felt stale, then discovering Chicano Park and deciding, almost immediately, that she needed to stay. She credits courage, not strategy, for getting her work in front of people, especially as an introvert who’s more comfortable writing than speaking. Meeting fellow introverted creatives, she said, made opening her studio to strangers feel far less intimidating.
What’s Next: Charcoal in Focus
Jess is currently channeling most of her creative energy into charcoal, experimenting with expressive stroke work alongside more refined, fine-pencil detail. She describes the process as playful, comparing it to a kid finger-painting, even as the resulting work leans distinctly into fine art territory.
Connect with Jess
Follow Jess Angelica’s work on Instagram @jessangelica, or check out her newly launched website jessangelicaart.com.
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