Jerry Ott is an American artist born in 1947 in Albert Lea, Minnesota. He is an acclaimed airbrush artist and painter of the Photorealist School of painting that emerged in the 1960s. He attended Mankato State College until 1971 and shortly after he received his master’s degree from University of Minnesota. Ott began to paint from photographs while still in college in the middle to late 1960's.  While citing Pop Artists such as James Rosenquist, Larry Rivers, and Richard Linder as strong influences, it wasn't until being introduced to the work of German artist, Paul Wunderlich that he began to work on a body of figurative work painted directly from photographs.  Throughout the 70s and 80s his work was shown in major exhibitions with a group of artists that were to become known as Photorealists, while also being exhibited as a major figurative painter.

Ott is among a group of contemporary American artists who have reintroduced figures, particularly nudes, into painting. Ott's nudes are not, however, the flashy, abstracted caricatures of the pop painters. Rather they are real, sensuous women closely observed in intimate settings. In his work female nudes appear as studies of form, symbols of present-day sexuality, and characters in complex personal dramas. Eroticism is not, the only aspect that attracts attention in Ott's paintings. He is also an accomplished illusionist. His use of trompe-l'oeil  (fool-the-eye) technique, a traditional painterly device, makes his simulation of textures and his rendering of space very convincing.

Jerry Ott uses an airbrush to apply paint to his canvases. The spraygun applies the paint in thin, delicate layers, giving the surface an evenness similar to that of mechanically produced photographs and eliminates the texture and stroke of the brush. This fine spray helps subtle blending of pigment, and forces the artist close to the canvas so that he has to concentrate on one small area at a time. Ott works from a photograph on which he overlays a grid. He expands the images to life size by enlarging and transferring each square of the grid to a matching square on the canvas.

Although similar in technique to other current Photo Realist painters, Ott's work is unique in content. He explores the simulation of contemporary textures, such as Mylar and Plexiglas, and emphasizes dramatic effects of light and shadow. He places various aspects of present-day sexuality within a personal iconographic framework. He inspects process, technique, and analyzes technology as a source and aid in art, which results in a disciplined craftsmanship.