Suzanne Jackson

Since the late 1990s, my paintings reflect my breaking away from the structure of stretched canvas or paper. I enjoy “ragged edges,” torn shapes, and found materials. I do not pre-determine or think about making organic painted shapes. Sometimes, I begin by establishing a layer of heavy Artist’s Acrylic medium as flexible under-surface, brushed or palette-knifed onto a plastic-covered surface. Pure acrylic paint on its own, applied over mesh or produce-bag netting, creates vibrant translucent surfaces. Overlaying acrylic glazes with different applied textures emphasizes the coincidental structural and architectural strengths within each painted foundation. All sorts of studio construction leftovers are used. Sometimes I reuse the paintbrush water so the paint does not go down the drain. I may include paint residue or elements of studio detritus in the layering process. The temperature or humidity where the pure medium dries or requires over-painting allows the works to be suspended in space as sculpted paintings. From the very beginning, it was about layering, glazing, almost as if I was working in watercolor, but in the same way that one might work with oil paint when layering for luminosity. So always layering, layering, and layering for light, color, texture, achieving “environmental abstraction.”

For over fifty years, visual artist Suzanne Jackson has worked in experimental ways across a number of artistic genres, including drawing, painting, printmaking, bookmaking, poetry, dance, and scenic and costume design. In the 1960s and 1970s, Jackson’s work depicted figures and recurring symbols which were built up through multiple layers of acrylic wash on canvas, creating paintings in which the distinction between depicted elements dissolves. Since then, her works have exploded the spatial constraints of the flat canvas and become semi-sculptural in nature. These “environmental abstractions,” as Jackson describes them, depict bodies, birds, and botanical and marine life through translucent, sometimes double-sided paintings, which are suspended from the wall or installed midair, allowing them to move slightly within a space and be viewed from all sides. 

Jackson’s works are in the permanent collections of museums across the nation, including: the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, Indianapolis, IN; and the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA. 

Jackson’s solo and survey exhibitions include: Somethings In the World (2023) at Galeria d’Arte Moderna (G.A.M) in Milan, Italy; To Bend The Ear of The Outer World (2023) at Gagosian in London, United Kingdom; Tennessee Triennial (2023) in Knoxville, TN; Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces (2022) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY; Joan Didion: What She Means (2022) at Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA and at the Perez Museum in Miami, FL; Suzanne Jackson: Listen’ N Home (2022) at Arts Club of Chicago in Chicago, IL; You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby: The Sapphire Show (2021) at Ortuzar Projects in New York, NY; and Off the Wall (2021) at Mnuchin Gallery in New York, NY; Suzanne Jackson News! (2019) at Ortuzar Projects, in New York , NY.

Jackson received The Jacob Lawrence Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2022, the Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award and the Anonymous Was a Woman Grant in 2021, and was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant in 2019. She completed her M.F.A. at Yale University in Theatre Design in 1990, and a B.A. in Art from San Francisco State University in 1966.