Described by the artist as “living artworks,” Jackson’s dreamlike paintings are as steeped in the natural world of her Alaskan childhood as they are in her encounters with 1960s counterculture in San Francisco, and the ancestral connections fostered by her study of African art and symbolism. Here, faces look in different directions but share a heart, a flower blooms from the beak of a bird, an arm turns into a rose, and a loose pool of color sweeps up into an orange fish. Mediating between dream and reality, Jackson conjures a mystical environment where human and nonhuman entities meet.
Vital Signs: Artists and the Body, November 3–February 22, 2024
Gallery label from 2022
At college in San Francisco, Jackson encountered the 1960s counterculture, whose social, ecological, and artistic movements often find mystical expression in her work. These two panels conjure the elements—wind and water—that give life and bring change. Commissioned by Sonny Bono, of the musical duo Sonny and Cher, the work reflects the psychedelic influences of the time. Dreamlike landscapes and allegorical figures abound in Jackson’s paintings, which are as steeped in the spiritual symbolism of ’70s Afrocentrism as they are in the natural world of her Alaskan childhood. “If . . . the symbols reflect my culture, my upbringing, my environment, and especially my femininity,” Jackson says, that is simply in everything of beauty and value that I want to do.”
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