Hi, I’m Jessyjo Darling.
I’m an Australian-born artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I create abstract works using earth, stone, charcoal and minerals that I gather from the landscapes around me and transform by hand into paint.
My work is rooted in place, memory and connection, but the journey to becoming an artist wasn’t exactly a straight line.
This is how I got here.
01 — WHERE IT STARTED
I suppose art was always around me.
I grew up around creativity — in my grandmother Jo’s studio, at her exhibitions, and surrounded by the landscapes she translated into paint.
Long before I understood that I would become an artist myself, I was watching what it looked like to build a life around making things.
I would spend hours in her studio, playing with oil paint, acrylic, and glass paint.
Watching her have solo exhibitions, creating large bodies of work inspired by the land that surrounded her, planted a seed in me, for not only my own creative voice, but in believing in myself.
My grandmother would commission planes to capture aerial photographs to later create abstract landscapes - long before there were drones.
02 — DESIGN / LEAVING AUSTRALIA
Knowing I had a love for design, fashion, interiors and creative direction, I pursued a Bachelor of Design at the Whitehouse Institute of Design in Melbourne, Australia.
That curiosity eventually took me across the world to New York, where I interned at Vogue, an early chapter that shaped the way I think about composition, storytelling and the visual world around us.
I didn’t know it yet, but all of it would eventually find its way back into my work as an artist.
03 — BUILDING SOMETHING OF MY OWN
After New York, I returned home to Australia and co-founded Skye & Staghorn, a swimwear label, with my best friend.
What started as two friends creating together grew into runway shows and collections stocked by major retailers. It was my first experience building a creative world from the ground up — designing the product, shaping the imagery and developing the visual identity around it.
Eventually, I sold my share of the business and found myself ready for another chapter — and another move across the world.
04 — BACK TO AMERICA
Eventually, I found my way back to the United States, where I worked across marketing, fashion, graphic design and architecture.
Each world taught me something different, how to tell a story, how to build a visual identity, how materials and spaces affect the way we feel, and how the smallest details can completely change an experience.
Without realizing it at the time, I was continuing to build my own aesthetic language; an eye for composition, restraint, material and place that would eventually find its way onto canvas.
And then, I started painting.
05 — I STARTED PAINTING
And land became the medium.
Around 2019, as I experimented with finding my own visual language, I began looking beyond traditional paint and toward the landscapes themselves.
I started gathering earth, stone, charcoal and minerals, learning how to process them by hand and transform them into pigment. What began as experimentation soon became the foundation of my entire practice. My studio at the time was the laundry room, confined to a small space, I often went outside to paint in the landscape the pieces were painted from.
For the first time, place wasn't simply something I was inspired by; it became the medium itself.
Having my hands in the earth gave me a way to make sense of where I was, where I'd been, and the places I felt connected to.
I've been painting with the land ever since.
06 — PIGMENTS OF PLACE WAS BORN
What started as pure joy; a playful way of making and experimenting with the earth — slowly became my career.
The work grew into large-scale commissions, exhibitions and projects across Australia, Arizona, California, Lake Tahoe and New Mexico, each one shaped by the landscape and materials of that particular place.
Along the way, Pigments of Place emerged — an ongoing body of work built around traveling through landscapes, gathering their earth, stone, charcoal and minerals, and carrying a physical piece of those places into the paintings.
What began as play became a way of documenting place — not just painting the landscape, but painting with it.
07 — ART BECAME CONNECTION
What started as pure joy and playful expression grew into something I hadn't anticipated — a way of connecting with people through place.
My practice grew into exhibitions, large-scale commissions and projects across Australia, Arizona, California, Lake Tahoe and New Mexico. But some of the most meaningful work has come from the people I've met along the way.
Through commissions, I've been invited into people's stories — gathering earth from places they love, translating memories and landscapes into paintings, and creating works that carry a deeply personal sense of place.
Over time, a community has grown around the work. Collectors have become friends, strangers have shared their stories with me, and paintings have become a reason to gather.
The earth may be the material, but connection has become a huge part of why I make the work.
08 — BEYOND THE CANVAS
As my relationship with earth pigments evolved, I began looking for ways to take the work beyond the traditional canvas.
I started painting surfboards — using earth, stone, charcoal and other materials gathered from the places they were made to be ridden. The boards became part painting, part object, and another way of telling the story of a landscape through its own materials.
They also opened the door to collaborations with surfers, shapers and collectors, and pushed me to think differently about where art could live.
09 — OPENING A GALLERY
In June of 2026, another chapter began in Santa Fe. Together with artist Bobby Beals, I opened Beals & Darling on historic Canyon Road.
As two working artists, we wanted to create a space that felt personal; built around place, storytelling and connection, and where collectors could discover not only the work, but the people and stories behind it.
Opening the gallery has expanded my creative world beyond my own studio, creating a home for artists, collectors and a growing community brought together through art.
10 — FIELD NOTES