Jesse Mockrin

Jesse Mockrin’s vivid portraits transform Old Masters subjects into unsettling, contemporary compositions. The Los Angeles–based painter crops scenes lifted from Caravaggios or Vermeers, for example, then zooms in on body parts or lets her canvases comprise mostly empty space. Sometimes, Mockrin divides compositions across multiple canvases while eliminating crucial pieces of the full image, as seen in works such as Abduction (2018) or Blinded, ridiculed, pitied (2020). She received her MFA from the University of California, San Diego, and has exhibited at galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Seoul, and San Diego. Mockrin’s work belongs in multiple collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Rubell Collection, and the Dallas Museum of Art.