‘JMK’

Original artwork

Edition 1 of 1

Paint on repurposed London bus panel

Ronald Jackson is a self proclaimed non-urban artist speculating on the realities of recent ancestors through portraiture. While he is not a portrait painter, he chooses to paint faces as a method of exploring the complexity of humanity. Each face archives the story of another person, emotionally embedded in the nuances of their unique features. While in the military, Jackson used to meditatively study the faces in the obituaries. He would imagine the lives of the people behind the faces, their families, desires, and notional futures as a way of keeping himself level in stressful times. His work is akin to this meditation; Jackson’s paintings wish to facilitate an interaction between the art and the viewer in which the masked portrait might convey the intricate journey of another. He hopes that this interaction might elicit the self discovery of value, beauty, and significance among people who might feel marginalised by society. Life, as described by Jackson, is informed by what is apparent and taught contrasted with the discoveries that create individual perspectives. The paintings are on one hand his method of sharing personal perspectives and on the other his way of urging people to find their own. Ronald Jackson currently lives and works in Fredricksburg, VA and has recently exhibited across the American South and in London.