Freebird

2025
Acrylic ink on paper 11 x 17 in.

In Freebird, Kiesha Jean channels the soaring spirit of liberation through a dynamic interplay of sweeping lines, rhythmic curves, and vivid fields of golden yellow, cerulean blue, and obsidian black. The work pulses with motion—each gestural mark suggests wings unfurling, currents shifting, and the invisible forces of freedom in flight.

Executed in acrylic ink, the painting captures a luminous immediacy while echoing calligraphic traditions and ancestral symbology. Kiesha's intuitive language of marks—some abstract, others suggestively figurative—invites the viewer into a meditative dance between spontaneity and structure. The negative space breathes, allowing the composition to feel simultaneously anchored and airborne.

Rooted in the rich natural surroundings of Sonoma County and informed by Kiesha's multidisciplinary, soul-forward approach, Freebird is both a personal anthem and a universal invocation. A celebration of resilience, self-direction, and joy, it offers a rare glimpse into the evolving visual lexicon of an artist poised for international recognition.

Caution

2025
Acrylic on Bristol paper 11 x 17 in

In Caution, Kiesha explores the seductive instability of romantic love through an abstract visual language charged with tension. Bold strokes of black loop and tangle across a searing yellow field, echoing the emotional disarray and warning signals that often accompany desire. The composition’s central motif—a figure ensnared within a ribbon marked “CAUTION”—is both a cry and a mirror, cautioning the viewer against the illusions of idealized love. Hearts float and fracture amid the chaos, symbols of hope pierced by experience. In Kiesha’s hand, warning becomes poetry. A compelling work that interrogates vulnerability with fearless clarity.

Boundaries

2025
Acrylic ink on Bristol paper 11 x 17 in.

In Boundaries, Kiesha explores the paradox of human connection—the places where openness and self-protection entwine. Sinewy red forms carve their way through pools of vibrant turquoise, evoking both bloodlines and currents, systems and surrender. At once lyrical and assertive, the composition speaks to Kiesha’s distinctive visual language: abstract calligraphies of emotion rendered in bold gestural arcs. The work’s intimate scale invites viewers into a personal reckoning with self-preservation and relational vulnerability, themes often simmering beneath the surface of Kiesha’s broader oeuvre. As with much of her work, Boundaries transcends the literal, conjuring a visceral resonance that leaves space for each viewer’s own reflection.

Spring Green

2025
Acrylic ink on Bristol Paper 11x17 in.

In Spring Green, Kiesha channels the fierce renewal energy of spring into a bold symphony of gesture and color. Vivid green lines dart, curl, and sprout across the surface like wild growth bursting from fertile ground, while heavy black brushstrokes carve a sense of structure and history into the chaos. The resulting tension is alive—flourishing and writhing, like nature itself reclaiming space.

Though abstract in form, the work carries unmistakable life force. Its movement is organic, its rhythm untamed. Kiesha’s signature visual language—part ritual, part rebellion—invites the viewer into a season of becoming, where growth is not always pretty, but always powerful.

Destined

2025
Acrylic Ink on Bristol Paper 11 x 17 in.

Destined is a revelation in black and blue. Created with oversized Japanese calligraphy brushes on a sheet of paper initially deemed the “wrong size,” this piece emerged from a moment of spontaneous freedom—a surrender to scale, movement, and intuition. Kiesha’s sweeping, confident gestures carve through the surface in arcs and strokes that evoke both written language and raw emotion.

There’s a striking duality in Destined: control and release, clarity and chaos, muscle and breath. This was not a planned composition but a conversation between brush and artist, where long-dormant tools finally found their purpose. What was once set aside as unsuitable revealed itself as inevitable.

A bold meditation on self-trust, timing, and the power of saying yes to what feels right.

Beneath the Pressure

2025
Acrylic Ink on Bristol 1 1 x 17 in.

Beneath the Pressure is the first work in Kiesha’s evolving gestural series—an unfiltered response to a moment of accumulated frustration, fatigue, and emotional weight. Painted in a state of near-discard, this piece began as an act of emotional defiance. The artist had reached a point where tasks kept unraveling, interruptions wouldn’t cease, and even the smallest victories felt impossible. With no clear outcome in mind, she turned to the page to release it all.

The result is raw and dynamic. Bold black arcs crash through the composition like crossed-out expectations. Fine red marks stir beneath and around them—fragmented, coded, frantic. There is push and pull. There is resistance and—somehow—grace. What was once almost thrown away became a map of transformation, a visual record of the body and spirit reclaiming control one stroke at a time.

Far from chaos, the finished piece radiates clarity. Beneath the Pressure is not an outburst—it’s a purge. And in its honesty, it reveals what many experience but rarely name: that perseverance doesn’t always look graceful—it often begins as survival, scratched onto the page.

Red Lines

2025
Acrylic Ink on Bristol 11 x 17 in.

In Red Lines, Kiesha engages in a powerful act of visual dissent—confronting the unspoken rules and cultural expectations imposed on women, especially those navigating motherhood, autonomy, and leadership outside conventional systems. Bold black strokes curve and clash across the surface, intersected and punctuated by precise red marks—symbols of social boundaries, wounds, and warnings.

These “red lines” are not literal constraints but emotional and societal ones: expectations about how to parent, how to earn, how to exist. Kiesha’s sweeping gestures resist them at every turn, crossing over, breaking through, doubling back—charting a nonlinear but resolute path toward something more human, more whole.

Despite the tension, the work also carries a kind of hope. There’s rhythm in the motion, breath in the composition—a sense that even when the road is crooked and marked with resistance, there’s room to move freely, to question, to keep walking toward something better.

The Embrace

2022
Ink on Paper 6 x 8 in.

In Embrace, Kiesha Jean captures the quiet beauty of a moment shared between two independent souls. Rendered in delicate ink lines, the intertwined figures are neither sexualized nor confined by cliché. Instead, they exist in mutual recognition—a brief but meaningful exchange of emotional presence. The drawing honors the rare, unspoken intimacy of being fully seen and gently held, without need for justification or future. It’s a celebration of emotional safety, mutual respect, and the sacredness of understanding—offered, not owed.

Kahn

2023
India ink on paper 5 x 8 in

Kahn is a tightly coiled vision of power—restrained yet unmistakably assertive. Kiesha’s use of red and sepia-toned ink imbues the figure with both ceremonial gravitas and mythic force. Loosely inspired by the Mongolian empire and the indomitable Genghis Khan, this composition pulses with the spirit of a forward-charging warrior, caught mid-roar.

With its stylized, sinewy musculature and swirling ornamental motifs, Kahn bridges the primal and the divine. The figure seems to emerge from another plane—part beast, part legend—etched with history and command. Kiesha’s minimal yet intricate inkwork reveals a portrait of conquest, identity, and legacy. A small but potent homage to those who carve empires from raw earth and fire.

A Walk In The Woods

2019
Etching on scratchboard 5 x 7 in.

Etched in white on black, A Walk In The Woods is not just an image—it is an act of defiance, a declaration of inner freedom made in the quiet corners of confinement. Created while Kiesha was in a relationship she no longer wanted, in a home she no longer wanted to be in, the piece served as an emotional lifeline.

The composition is a fantasy of peace: a stylized figure in organic flow walks through a forest where grasses curl and trees hum with motion. Every mark carved into the scratchboard became a release—each line an invitation to step away from noise, into solitude and soulspace.

What makes this piece quietly extraordinary is that it isn’t born from escape, but from survival. The artist may not have been able to leave yet—but she went anyway, on paper. And now, with time passed and peace reclaimed, it stands as a gentle monument to the human instinct for beauty even in darkness.

Grow

2019
Etching on Scratchboard 5x7in.

Grow is an intimate contradiction—delicate floral forms violently etched into unforgiving black scratchboard. Created during a season of personal struggle, Kiesha used this small but potent piece to externalize what could not yet be spoken. While her surroundings felt stifling, she reached instead for growth—painful, imperfect, and necessary.
Each line is made by physically scraping the surface, demanding both precision and pressure. At one point, the composition fractures—on the right side, a leaf explodes in frenzied crosshatching, a moment of emotional rupture captured in the raw language of mark-making. Rather than edit it out, Kiesha left it intact. It is not a flaw—it is the truth.
What results is a flower that does not simply bloom—it fights its way through.

Happy Days

2025
Acrylic ink on hardboard 18 x 24 in.

Happy Days is a chromatic celebration of presence, painted only in moments of lightness, warmth, and internal joy. Over the course of a year, Kiesha returned to this piece exclusively on days that felt expansive—when the sun was out and her spirit was aligned with it. Each mark is a record of a real-time emotional state, layered patiently in intervals of honest happiness.

The composition is a vibrant field of blooming gestures—floral, aquatic, and calligraphic all at once. The repetition of organic motifs in bright blues, purples, greens, and coral tones creates a rhythmic, almost musical visual experience. Despite the precision of form, the overall effect is one of spontaneity and lift.

Happy Days is not just a painting—it’s a time capsule of joy, revisited and revisited again until it glowed.

Dancing in the Deep

2018
Oil on Canvas 16 x 20 inches

Dancing in the Deep is a lyrical expression of joy unearthed in hardship. Created in 2018 while the artist was navigating an uncertain and emotionally challenging seasons of her life, this piece was born not from stability—but from defiance, softness, and a deep inner instinct to move forward.

Composed in lush waves of ultramarine, indigo, and periwinkle, the painting evokes the sensation of deep water—both engulfing and liberating. At the center, an abstract feminine form spirals upward in a fluid, dance-like motion, suggesting both surrender and resistance.

The brush moved like a body dancing. There was no plan—just presence. In the midst of emotional depths, she found joy.

The result is a visual contradiction: heavy and light, dark and luminous, quiet and celebratory. Dancing in the Deep is a testament to the strange power of artmaking—how beauty can rise even when everything else is sinking.

See Yah

2024
India Ink on Coldpress 300gsm

See Yah is Kiesha’s spirited exit—an unapologetic farewell steeped in both patience and power. This bold work captures the exact moment someone finally walks out of a chapter they’ve long outgrown. Not bitter, not broken—just done. The kind of "later" that echoes with self-respect.

The silhouetted figure, formed entirely through contrast and flow, is captured mid-stride, casting one last glance over the shoulder. The negative space becomes a presence in itself—a room once occupied, now being left behind. Stylized swirls radiate like held-in energy being released, full of the momentum that comes only after endurance.

This piece holds joy, release, and a bit of a wink. A reminder that sometimes walking away is not escape—it's evolution.

Thoughts Run Wild

2019
Ink on Paper 5 x 7 in.

Thoughts Run Wild is an intimate glimpse into the quiet, solitary moment of allowing the mind to dream freely. This work was born from a night spent lying in bed, letting imagined lives unfold like stories across the ceiling. It is a study in introspection—of the rare and sacred space where desire is given permission to wander.

Rendered in flowing, windswept lines, the figure is seen from behind, vulnerable yet composed. Her hair—an extension of her inner world—streams outward in long, unbroken waves, as if thought itself had become visible. There is no cage here, no defined edge—only movement. Only permission.

This piece is both personal and universal: a tribute to the late-night ritual of wondering what if, and a gentle celebration of the freedom found in our private reveries.

Drivin Down a Country Road
2018
Watercolor on 300gsm Coldpress 11x14 in.

Inspired by a long slow drive during a lovely late summer sunset in Northern California.

Charge

2023
Oil on Panel 24 x 36 in.

Charge captures a transformational moment—a time when Kiesha had carved out a life of her own, but still stood face-to-face with the deeper, quieter work of becoming her fullest self. As a single mother, provider, and artist, she had no choice but to charge forward. But this work reveals the truth beneath that momentum: that the real battle wasn’t just external—it was internal.

Waves of energy, painted in forceful strokes of turquoise and ochre, sweep through the panel like wind and spirit in motion. At the center, a horse’s head takes shape—emerging not as a gentle presence, but as a force breaking through its own storm. It gallops through limitation, through fear, through personal illusions once clung to for safety. It is the kind of power that does not ask permission.

This is not a painting of chaos—it is one of alignment. Charge honors that moment of radical self-honesty when you stop blaming others and instead take the reins. It is about strength, healing, solitude, and grit. And it is about finally gaining the clarity and energy to run free—not just in the world, but within yourself.

Looking Out

2025
Alcohol Ink on Yupo 11 x 17 in.

In Looking Out, Kiesha invites the viewer into a moment of quiet majesty—perched atop a mountain ridge, surveying a vast desert that stretches far beyond the frame. Rendered in layered washes of honeyed earth tones and airy sky blue, the piece evokes not just a landscape, but a feeling of stillness and scale.

The translucent layering of alcohol ink on Yupo creates organic veining and subtle gradations—geological and atmospheric at once. This is not a literal rendering but a sensorial memory: the warmth of sunbaked stone beneath you, the immensity of distance ahead, and the clarity that arrives when nothing demands your attention but the horizon.

A contemplative work that holds both presence and possibility.

Summit

2021
Ink on Yupo 12x12 inches

Summit is Kiesha’s meditative response to the experience of effort, arrival, and impermanence. This piece captures the serene, breath-catching moment at the top of a climb—literal or metaphorical. Cool sapphire skies stretch wide above streaked stone ridges and delicate, stylized trees. A glowing orb floats above it all—sun or moon, both or neither—illuminating a moment of clarity.

While the artist openly admits she doesn't enjoy the physical act of climbing, she reveres the release and reward that follow. The descent. The shift. The view. The metaphor extends to life itself—every peak is hard-won and fleeting. But when we are fully present in those brief summits, they imprint something lasting on the spirit.

This piece is still and soft, yet it hums with the echo of effort. Summit reminds us to celebrate the moment we stop, breathe, and look around—before the next incline begins.

Silence is Golden

Acrylic on Black Board

True Nature

2025
Acrylic Ink on Tan Toned Paper 9x12in.

M.
2024
Ink on Paper 9 x 12 in.

2025
Acrylic Ink on Tan Toned Paper 9x12in.

Energy Flows

2019
Ink on Paper 5 x 7 in.

Energy Flows is a meditative study in movement, growth, and artistic surrender. Originally created in 2019 during Kiesha’s early exploration with brush pens, the piece was tucked away in a notebook—unseen, uncelebrated—for over six years.

Now revisited with new eyes, Energy Flows reveals itself as a quiet turning point: the moment when the artist began to loosen her grip on perfection and embrace the expressive fluidity of line. Undulating ink waves radiate from central floral forms—each petal and stroke pulsing with intention and raw immediacy. The tension between order and release, control and letting go, is where this work finds its voice.

It’s a sketch in name only—visually lush, emotionally grounded, and spiritually honest.