Vanessa Jackson, on first reading, appears to take the most formal approach to painting, but her use of geometry and its three dimensional function deny the supposed flatness of modernist space. Jackson's work explores the contradiction of a fully realised space at once pertaining to logic and completeness and uncertainty and unease. The ornamental and optical play of colour acts to both confirm and confuse our sense of perception, constantly shifting between concrete presence and the ambiguity of space beyond our grasp.
Jackson destabilises the very 'ground' we most desire, a sense of security and belonging.
Jackson was elected as a Royal Academician in 2015.
Vanessa Jackson, on first reading, appears to take the most formal approach to painting, but her use of geometry and its three dimensional function deny the supposed flatness of modernist space. Jackson's work explores the contradiction of a fully realised space at once pertaining to logic and completeness and uncertainty and unease. The ornamental and optical play of colour acts to both confirm and confuse our sense of perception, constantly shifting between concrete presence and the ambiguity of space beyond our grasp.
Jackson destabilises the very 'ground' we most desire, a sense of security and belonging.
Jackson was elected as a Royal Academician in 2015.
13 Pedestrian Crossings, 2021
BY VANESSA JACKSON, 2022
To read this book is to step into the studio of a painter. These writings, rich sources of information, share thoughts, processes and practices that together demonstrate links between geometry, visual perception, history and literature. Murmurations is constitutive of an ever-expanding studio and in its midst a life—a painter's life—comes to take place.
'Murmurations is a valuable and erudite gift to the reader. Vanessa Jackson pulls us into shifting and discursive thought- drifts in which we encounter a passion for the rigour of geometry, reflections on the design of the writing of Proust, the relationship between a tripod and a pyramid, Chopin pacing the lawn as he improvises in his head, the ways in which art might make and hold time. Above all, Murmurations viscerally embodies the artist in the studio, thinking alongside the voices of history and art history in the present tense.' - Deborah Levy
Available to purchase from Copy Press or your local bookshop
BY VANESSA JACKSON, 2014
a book on her wall paintings with text by Rebecca Geldard.
Available to purchase from the artist.
The work of John Dougill, edited by Vanessa Jackson with essay by Dr Jim Mooney
Available to purchase. Please contact us.
Jackson's work is also included in, PAINTING (Documents of Contemporary Art) by Terry Myers, Whitechapel Art Gallery/MIT, 2011 and Contemporary British Women Artists: In Their Own Words, by Rebecca Fortnum, published by IB Tauris, 2012.
In 1986 and 1994 Jackon's woodcuts accompanied the Poems of James Laughlin in two publications The House of Light published by Grenfell Press, and A Secret Language published by Cast Iron Press/Penelope Hughes-Stanton. A Secret Language is available by request from the artist.
In 1986 and 1994 Jackson's woodcuts accompanied the Poems of James Laughlin, Founder of New Directions Publishing Corp. in 1936, New York City.
50 years on, Covent Garden 1972, film by St Martin's Art Foundation students: Vanessa Jackson, Stephen Cooper, George Meyrick, John Strachan and Nigel Tether instigated by their tutor John Dougill.
Curvature and Common Sense: Making Sense in the Studio, RA Schools Annual Lecture 2014, funded by the David Lean Foundation.