Jesse Hale

Jesse Hale, a Nashville-based artist, was born in 1984 in Tyler, Texas. His creative energy and curiosity were encouraged from an early age by his father, a freelance illustrator, and his mother who, according to Jesse, “made sure I got to all my violin lessons.” Besides his childhood, Jesse cites “documentaries, the internet, and lots of failure” as his primary art education.

Playing the violin since the age of four, Hale pursued music while in school, graduating from Belmont University in 2007, then continuing his musical career throughout his twenties. In 2013, however, having performed for over 8 years, he made a decision to break from the music industry with the intention to explore his art more broadly. Through this transition, he began to re-discover his childhood passion for visual art.

In the early stages of this journey, Hale resonated with work from artists such as Ai Weiwei, Chuck Close, Marina Abramovic, Sol Lewitt, Damien Hirst, and Gerhard Richter. From these newfound inspirations, along with his firmly-rooted passions for music, science, and general curiousity, Jesse began to develop his own practice as a way to grapple with questions regarding faith, existence, identity and meaning. His first exhibition, Susp...

July 2016, Ceilings Walls Windows Doors [Part I], O'More College of Design, Nashville, TN

December 2013, Suspensions, Fort Houston, Nashville, TN

PUBLICATIONS

March 2014, Suspensions, Nashville Art Magazine Cover Feature