Jackie Hilmes (b. 1987, Des Moines, Iowa) is an abstract expressionist painter living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Rooted in emotional urgency and embodied memory, her work is a meditation on presence—how it feels to be fully in a moment, and how often words fail to hold that truth.

Hilmes’s paintings are marked by intuitive brushwork, layered textures, and dynamic compositions that oscillate between boldness and restraint. Working primarily in oil and oil pastel on unstretched canvas or primed paper—and often incorporating graphite and ink—what emerges is improvisational and deeply felt: a breathing, shifting sensory field where emotion leads and structure follows.

Influenced by artists like Yayoi Kusama, Cecily Brown, and Joan Mitchell, Hilmes draws from a lineage of women who challenged aesthetic conventions and claimed space for emotional intensity. Kusama’s obsession with repetition, Brown’s mastery of color and gesture, and Mitchell’s radical freedom all echo through Hilmes’ canvases. Just as present are the unspoken things—experiences that don’t lend themselves to tidy narrative or visual literalism. Her paintings are not illustrations of feeling but extensions of it: projections, reflections, and records of being.

Hilmes prioritizes freedom over polish, expression over perfection, and process over outcome. Her creative decisions are guided by instinct and emotion, allowing each work to evolve in its own time. Rather than pursuing a consistent visual style, she follows the internal logic of each painting, trusting the composition to reveal itself.

Ultimately, her work seeks to carve out space—emotional, physical, and imaginative—for ambiguity, tenderness, and transformation. These are not paintings to be figured out, but to be felt. They invite a slower kind of looking, a deeper kind of listening, and a momentary suspension of the need to explain.

Solo Exhibits

2023 Art on Mozart, Chicago

Selected Group Exhibition

2019 Brushes with Cancer

2017 Nasty Women Art Chicago

2017 “A Digital World” Morpho Gallery, Chicago

2013 Artrageous Chicago

Residencies

2025 L.A. Studio and Art-14 Residency, Summer Cohort

Professional Affiliations

Jeid Studio, Des Moines, Iowa

Happy DSM, Des Moines, Iowa