Jessica Halonen’s research-based work explores intersections between art, science, and history. She has engaged with topics such as genetic engineering in the pharmaceutical industry and the historical and metaphorical implications of the color blue. Halonen’s most recent project, PM, is a series of paintings that co-mingles abstraction and trompe l'oeil informed by a collection of Victorian era toxic wallpapers. Halonen's work has been widely exhibited, reviewed in Artforum, and is in the permanent collections of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston among others.
While at MacDowell in 2007, Halonen began a series of drawings titled Rx Garden that explores pharmaceutical composition and biological reactions to plant-based prescription drugs. During her 2025 residency, she began a series of paintings that engaged research into patterns found in the molecular structures of medicine, including the Festival Pattern and Design Group (a post-war British collaboration of scientists and designers).
Portrait by Elaine Yasumoto
