“Everyone has a link to somewhere special,” writes painter/zoologist Kurt Jackson in the introduction to his book Place, one of a series of beautifully crafted publications that explore the art of landscape painting in an around Cornwall, South West England where the artist lives, as well as other far-flung places throughout the UK. First published in 2014 by Sansom & Co., an imprint of Recliffe Press Ltd., Place is currently sold out, but you can always get a copy via the Inter-library loan system. My first encounter with Jackson’s art was via A New Genre of Landscape Painting, another high-quality book published in 2010 that sets the stage for the magnificent display of painterly imagery contained in numerous exhibition catalogs and site-specific books published by the Jackson Foundation over the years. Information about these resources, along with access to Jackson’s films, are available at kurtjackson.com, which features updates about current exhibitions as well.
Rereading Jackson’s classic Place recently and looking through my collection of the painter’s other books and catalogs as I often do for inspiration, set me to wondering what exactly makes a Kurt Jackson painting so appealing. Is it the intimacy of the focus on the subject? The dynamic composition? The vibrant colors? The magical light? It’s all of these factors, of course, and much more, but I think Richard Mabley, writing in Two Woods, revealed the essence of Jackson’s achievement with the phrase “the sheer vitality of the paint itself.” The beautiful paintings are important, but what really makes Place unique in the genre of art books are the insights of 32 contributing commenters like Richard Mabley the artist recruited for the project, “Friends, colleagues and admired writers,” who wrote about their links to special places throughout the British Isles that served as subject matter for the featured works of art. Their narratives provide a powerful unifying thread that elucidates the factors that make it possible to establish real affinity with a beloved locale. The effect extends far beyond the burning desire the book provokes to own an original Jackson painting; it is also a testament to the power of Jackson’s art to spark creativity in others and even motivate them to celebrate their own “somewhere special.”
I was reminded of this recently when I purchased Hawthorne Autumn, a limited-edition Jackson etching. At the frame shop as we opened the package and laid the print on the counter, I recalled the scene from Jackson’s book Botanical Landscapes when local artists attending the Woodland Trust summer workshop gathered under the artist’s lead to study and paint the Hawthorne, an occasion he described as “a perfect potential lesson plan for schools and classes, whether discussing ecology or the attachment to your area, history, geography or just looking at the aesthetics and lie of the land.” It was a beautiful example of the transformative power of Jackson’s enlightened environmental activism that lies at the heart of his creative focus. Bell Mooney described this eloquently in the essay, Two Trees/Five Senses/A World: “I believe his greatness as an artist stems directly from his reverence for a natural world which, being constantly threatened by human folly and greed, is nevertheless restored to power and glory in his art.”
Helen Dunmore, in her beautifully written contribution to the book, delves further into the mysterious grip Jackson’s art has on his audience in her observation about his relationship with the flow of time, the importance of living in the present moment and the way art facilitates and intensifies that imperative. “Perhaps Jackson’s paintings gain some of their aesthetic power from this tension between what is recorded and what is lost forever. Their fascination is akin to that which we feel when standing on a bridge, watching the endless flow of a current that never eddies in exactly the same way twice. These paintings remind us of the limitations of our own days, as well as the intensity of their pleasures. We will die; but first we will see this.”
What do we see? In addition to the sheer beauty of it all, we perceive the connections to the primal biological forces that created us and that continue to challenge and sustain us on this vulnerable and imperiled planet in the sentient universe we call Earth. Gregory Bateson, the pioneer ecological systems thinker, championed the idea that active interaction with the living world can be the facilitator of the wisdom needed to lead mankind out of the current environmental crisis, an issue central to Kurt Jackson’s work. According to Noel G. Charlton writing in his book Understanding Gregory Bateson, “The route to this realization is via personal engagement with the more-than-rational-processes of the natural world and human art…By recognizing beauty in the world we can identify sane and health-promoting possibilities for action.”
Bateson’s idea is right in sync with what the BBC described as Kurt Jackson’s “deep regard and respect for nature, reflected in his environmental concerns and involvement in campaigns to preserve the balance between man and nature.” Ecologist magazine Arts Editor Gary Cook says Jackson’s ‘love for the wild ecology of the UK’s favorite coastline has made him one of the country’s most respected art activists.” Jackson’s work, and especially his book Place, provide ample means, not only for “recognizing beauty,” but also for establishing the essential ground rules for salubrious environmental activism via the visual arts.
“I have a paranoia that when I attempt to paint, sculpt or respond to a particular part of the world my response may fall into that of simply a tourist, like the brief snapping of an image, producing a fleeting trivial record that has no depth or link to anything other than the desire to visit,” Jackson writes in Place. “To follow a river, ancient track-way or path through the Landscape slowly and repeatedly: over, across and through (and occasionally even under the countryside using the practice of making visual imagery) is the ultimate way to discover, understand and ultimately become intimate with a place.”