Jessica May Underwood

Artist and designer Jessica May Underwood has an established career working in pencil and watercolor. As an illustrator and artist, she has worked collaboratively across multiple disciplines including fashion, curation, interior design, architecture and publishing. Driven by a background in traditional etching, fashion and art curation, her illustrative work has a singular style and an inimitable quality of line. She has an uncompromising commitment to the application, precision, and continued education in the work that she does.

Studying at Central Saint Martin’s, Jessica graduated while working in-house, at Alexander McQueen. She has since worked with Nick Knight, Burberry, Vivienne Westwood and Jason Wu. Her continued collaboration with Wu specifically has manifested in more than one collection, as well as the creation of a hand-painted chinoiserie jacquard for the MET Gala, by request of the curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Her work was exhibited in the Harrods windows in part of the department store’s first hand illustrated campaign. The installation was extended to the HRH Chelsea Flower Show; becoming the first paper crafted fragrance garden ever to be exhibited in the show’s 103-year history.

She has spoken in panel discussions and has been featured in the Victoria & Albert Museum Lecture Program on the enduring art of illustration, and the history of decorative arts.

Her original paintings can be purchased through Nick Knight’s Show Studio Gallery, London.

Hear her in conversation here with Jason Wu, for a talk series entitled “Pencils Down” hosted by MA+Group and Neuehouse.