J.W. Ford is an accomplished artist who has worked in watercolor, acrylic and airbrush, charcoal, graphite and digital computer art. Most recently she has begun working in metal - embossing and painting on copper, brass and aluminum.

Her artistic passion has always been head and shoulder portraits of the human being. The portrait can be expressed literally as in a realistic commissioned portrait. But her favored area is in doing expressionist portraits of heads and faces that come from within herself. Here she feels totally unencumbered and is free to express various ideas and concepts oftentimes of a spiritual nature. And sometimes her love of fashion and graphic design take center stage. But always she attempts to create with meticulous attention to design, composition, color, pattern, shine and texture.                                   

Jay's artwork in New York City has been displayed at Art In Flux Harlem Galleries, The Jean Michel Basquiat Tribute at Harlem’s Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building, Citibank Gallery on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, The Dorsey Art Club in   Brooklyn, The JVC Jazz Art Exhibition, The West Side Artists Coalition Black Renaissance Art Show, Art Expo Jacobs Javits Center, Savacou Gallery, The Television City Gallery, The Elsa Mott Ives Gallery, Galeria Art & Framing, The Clinton Hill Simply Art Gallery in Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Waterfront Coalition Artists Show, Warner Brothers Backlot Gallery, Art Expo Los Angeles Convention Center in California and her piece "Time Out" won a place in the prestigious Taos Watercolor Society Show at the Van Vechten Gallery in Taos, New Mexico. She was honored by the New York Urban League in their Salute to African American Women Artists and her work has been in the art collection of EBONY/JET Magazine's New York Office and was featured in national publications such as Decor Magazine and Art Business News.

Her early art was published by Icart Graphics of California and distributed throughout the United States and Europe. One of the prints "Natural Beauty" was part of the set on an episode of ABC network sitcom "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper". She studied at the following schools in New York City: Art Students League, School of Visual Arts, Fashion Institute of Technology and The Craft Students League, and is a member of The Harlem Arts Alliance, The National Conference of Artists and The West Side Arts Coalition.