She got her BFA in painting from the Honors College at Arizona State University in 2001. She taught life drawing and painting at New School for the Arts and Academics in Tempe, Arizona from 2002 to 2007 before leaving academia to paint full-time.
Bess is known for her highly realistic, sometimes surrealistic, baroque-style oil paintings on panel. Her work has drawn comparisons to that of the Dutch Masters, as well as to certain subgenres of the lowbrow art movement.
In 2014 she was awarded the Arlene and Morton Scult Contemporary Forum Artist Award (the Contemporary Forum is a support organization of the Phoenix Art Museum).

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