Jess Collins (most commonly known as Jess), is a celebrated San Francisco artist known for his highly symbolic paintings and layered collages that combine imagery from mythology, alchemy, popular culture and the male body. He originally studied chemistry, and after being drafted into the military at a young age, he worked in a plutonium mining project for manufacturing atomic bombs, and later in a project focusing on atomic energy. His growing concern for the threat that atomic weaponry posed to our planet is said to be one of the factors that led him to abandon his work as a scientist to pursue art full-time. Jess then became a pivotal figure of the Bay Area’s artistic and literary scene, not only through his work as an artist but through his lifelong romantic partnership and artistic collaboration with postwar American poet Robert Duncan. Akin to Duncan’s idiosyncratic poems, Jess’ paintings draw on myth, occultism and religion, often expressed through the dense layering of found images sourced from book illustrations and comic strips that the artist salvaged during his frequent walks around San Francisco’s thrift stores and book shops.