Kurt Jackson

Kurt Jackson (born 1961) is an English painter whose large canvases reflect a concern with natural history, ecology and environmental issues. Born in Blandford, Dorset, he developed an early interest in natural history and landscape. He studied zoology at St. Peter's College, Oxford, but spent most of his time attending classes at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art or painting in the countryside around Oxford. In 1984 he and his wife Caroline Jackson moved to Cornwall; currently he lives and works near St Just, Penwith.

He paints in mixed media, drawing inspiration from the Cornish landscape around Penwith and elsewhere in Britain and abroad. Appearances on British television include 'Kurt Jackson, A Picture of Cornwall' BBC1 South West, 2005 and 'Kurt Jackson, A Picture of the South West', BBC3, 2005.

He has been Artist in Residence on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza at the Eden Project and at Glastonbury Festival since 1999. He has an Honorary Doctorate (DLitt) from Exeter University and is an Honorary Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford University. He is an ambassador for Survival International and frequently works with Friends of the Earth, WaterAid, Oxfam, Surfers Against Sewage and Cornwall Wildlife Trust. He is represented by the Lemon Street Gallery, Truro and by Redfern Gallery, in Cork Street, London. He is an academician at the Royal West of England Academy.

The majority of Jackson's work reflects his commitment to the environment and the natural world within Cornwall, although he also works elsewhere in Britain and mainland Europe; recent projects include bodies of work on the Thames, the Avon, the Forth, Ardnamurchan and the Glastonbury Festival series. His paintings frequently carry small commentaries on the scene depicted and show a fascination particularly with the detail of plants and animals within an overall ecology and evoke a calm, spiritual and warm relationship with the landscape, even of apparently bleak scenes. His work has been described as "uplifting" and "transporting". To quote Robert Macfarlane "the bristling of landscape is Kurt Jackson's subject as an artist, and his brilliance as an artist lies in the success with which he represents his subject"

Pool in a woodland of sallow and ivy, Skimmel Bridge, January 2007 by Kurt Jackson

Artist's statement

"In Cornwall my subjects are mostly places I know well, that I visit over and over again  –  certain areas of coast, moorland and valleys. I tend to work on projects, usually over a year, which are based on a particular aspect of Cornish culture or a distinct tract of countryside. Capturing a fleeting impression doesn't interest me. In all my paintings the aim is to convey my feelings and sense of awareness in that particular environment."

See also

• List of St. Ives artists

Selected bibliography

• Smit, Tim et al (2010). Kurt Jackson: A New Genre of Landscape Painting. Lund Humphries in association with Lemon Street Gallery. ISBN 9781848220416. 
• “Paintings of Cornwall and the Scillies”, Kurt Jackson, 1999, White Lane Press.
• “The Cape”, Kurt Jackson, Ronald Gaskell, 2002, Truran.
• “The Thames Project”, 2006, Lemon Street Gallery.
• "Recent Work", 2011,The Redfern Gallery, London

Further reading

• Mark Cocker, Helen Dunmore, Bill Hare, Howard Jacobson, Richard Mabey, Philip Marsden, Bel Mooney, William Packer, John Russell Taylor, Tim Smit and Mike Tooby, Kurt Jackson: A New Genre of Landscape Painting (Farnham, Lund Humphries, 978-1-84822-041-6, 2010).

External links

• Kurt Jackson website
• Kurt Jackson page at the Lemon Street Gallery
• Kurt Jackson page at The Redfern Gallery