Date : 25.01.07
But it must be rare for them to be used by an artist in the making of his paintings and for those paintings to be exhibited in a London gallery, thus bringing The Cornishman, albeit only fragments of the paper, to the notice of those in the capital. But such is the case for St Just-based Kurt Jackson's acrylic and collage paintings Chitted potatoes ready for planting and A handful of runners picked on a wet foggy missley (sic) Cornish morning, two of the 135 works, plus two bronze sculptures, that make up his exhibition now being held at Messum's in Cork Street, London.His eighth solo show in this prestigious gallery, known for his fondness for producing paintings centred around a theme with this, as it were, he gives his viewer two shows for the price of one; almost 100 of them being devoted to to his wife Caroline and the Veg Patch and the remainder to Two French Rivers (the Coly and the Aude).
As well known also for his commitment to conservation and the environment as he is for his themed paintings, he not only talks about the threats to our planet but does something about them.
For example, he has given the proceeds from the sales of two of his paintings, River Coly, Perigord. Flycatchers catch demoiselles, and Last of the Artichokes, sold at the exhibition opening for well over £11,000, to the Friends of the Earth Trust.
In his foreword to the exhibition catalogue Tony Juniper, Chief Executive of the Trust, points out: "Kurt Jackson is one of the few modern painters to have set out to describe our ecological dilemma and the possibilities for a more sympathetic relationship with the Earth... Explaining the deeper spiritual, political and psychological dimensions of ecological crisis is an endeavour that surely lends itself to the compassion of art. This is something that Kurt shows us in this wonderful collection."
Born in Blandford, Dorset, Kurt Jackson held his first solo show in Cornwall in 1986 at the North Cornwall Museum, Camelford, and his first solo show in Penwith four years later, soon after he and his wife Caroline and their young family had settled in St Just, at the then Visions & Journeys Gallery in the town.
He has since exhibited extensively in this country from Lostwithiel to London and abroad from France and Germany to the USA. Sometime chairman of the Newlyn Society of Artists, in recent years he has also been artist-in-residence at Cill Riallaig in Ireland, at the Glastonbury Festival and on the Greenpeace Ship Esperanza, not to mention being filmed for and featured on BBC-TV in Kurt Jackson: A Picture of Cornwall.
An en plein air artist extraordinaire, one who could hardly have a more hands on approach to his art, there is nothing he likes better than pitting himself against the elements and whatever they choose to throw at him and has walked, swam, canoed and climbed, worked on the surface and underground, on the sea and under it, in pursuit of his subject matter.
Adventurous and unconventional, but not all that surprising when you learn of the nomadic existence he led for several years subsequent to graduating from Oxford University where he spent much of his time at the Ruskin College of Art when he should have been elsewhere studying for his degree in zoology.
As well as painting while going walkabout through Africa he also went to South America and it was there, when living with the Kamorokoto Indians that he witnessed at first hand the destruction of the rain forest, an experience which hardened his resolve to do something about environmental issues and later, when a practising painter, to look closely at the materials he was using.
A painter who uses both ends of his brush, who has been described as "one of the most interesting artists working from nature in Britain", his paintings go way beyond most in this genre, leaping over traditional boundaries to illuminate nature as he finds and sees it.
An "instinctive Natural Philosopher" as the art critic and painter William Packer writes of Kurt Jackson in his exhibition catalogue essay on the artist: "He is indeed an artist whose work can only be read properly in terms of the life which informs it.
"He is an artist because that is what he is, rather than revealed as such through what he does. He lives the life.
"Yet there is also something entirely disarming in the very unselfconsciousness with which he puts himself in that position.
"His approach to his work is utterly direct and practical. There is no striking of attitudes, no overt polemic.
"He sets himself to what interests him, and gets on with the work, utterly absorbed."
The "utterly absorbing" paintings that emerge as a result of all this fully justify the artist's approach.
There are so many of them in this two-part exhibition it is impossible to mention them all, but there are striking studies in the first part Caroline and the Veg Patch such as Collecting seaweed for the veg; Weeds - for Gerard Manley Hopkins: "The veg patch is surrounded by thistles, yarrow, grass and docks. Swallows twitter above me"; Docks and Teasels and spear thistles, plus those in which his wife Caroline is seen at work in the Veg Patch, and in the second part Two French Rivers, among them two works in mixed media on linen, This river Coly flows into the Vezere which flows into the Dordogne and A golden oriole sings, the scent of hot figs, a warm wind blows the Aude River to the Med, that at £26,500 apiece, are the most expensive paintings in the show.
With his bronze sculptures Sexy sprouts and Cornish shovel, they add up to a treasure trove of art, and stand as a testament to the artist's energy, endeavour and enterprise, his warmth, wit and wisdom.
Two projects or exhibitions that might be seen as windows opening on to the life and work of both Kurt Jackson and his wife Caroline, they should not be missed.
Kurt Jackson's Caroline and the Veg Patch and Two French Rivers are on view at Messum's, 8 Cork Street, London W1S 3LJ, 10am to 6pm Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm Saturday, until February 3.
Click here the view the article on 'This is Cornwall'