Artist Who Made Still Lifes, Ceramics Dies at 41

Jasmine Little, a Los Angeles–based painter who made lush still lifes and etched ceramic vessels dense with historical references, has died at 41. La Loma, her Los Angeles gallery, announced her death on Friday. No cause of death was provided.

In a statement, gallery owner Kirk Nelson, who worked with Little since 2019, described her as “a force of nature” and her work as “a reflection of her essence–at times tender, at times emotional, often naughty, always curious, and filled with wonder, beauty, pain–the whole astonishing rainbow of feeling, being.”

“Even though I worked alongside her for years, I don’t know how this young artist from Joshua Tree sgraffito’d mythologies onto stone as if she was beamed in from Pompeii A.D,” Nelson said. “She worked in divine, painful frenzies for days and weeks on end. Monuments emerged. Five-hundred-pound sculpture inlaid with obsessively, beautifully detailed linework and whole narratives. I was awed by her art and prodigy, but what I will miss most of all is our deep, silly friendship. Long conversations in her studio about the lonely, inspired life of artmaking. She was funny and relentless and made art of the gods.”

Little was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1984. She received her bachelor’s from UCLA in 2007 and, in 2015, earned a master’s from Adam State University in Alamosa, Colorado. Night Gallery, Tif Sigfrids, Nina Johnson Gallery, Marianne Boesky Gallery, and other galleries have exhibited Little’s work.

“Our hearts go out to her family and all of those she touched,” Nelson said.