Suzanne Jackson

Suzanne Jackson is an artist who works experimentally across mediums, including drawing, painting, printmaking, bookmaking, poetry, dance, theater, and costume design.

Biography of Suzanne Jackson

Suzanne Jackson was born in 1944 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Her family relocated to San Francisco, California, when she was just nine months old. Jackson resided in San Francisco until the age of eight. Subsequently, she was raised in the city of Fairbanks, Alaska, from 1952 to 1961.

In 1961, she graduated from Monroe Catholic High School. Later, Jackson enrolled at San Francisco State University (SFSU), where she pursued studies in both art and ballet, eventually earning a BA degree in painting. She was actively involved at SFSU, curating exhibitions at the campus art gallery and teaching art at St. Stephen's Catholic School.

In 1990, she obtained an MFA degree from the School of Drama at Yale University, specializing in theater design.

The artist has received several notable awards, including the Jacob Lawrence Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 2022, an Anonymous Was A Woman grant in 2021, the NYFA Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award in 2020, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant in 2019.

Her recent solo exhibitions include "Furla Series: Suzanne Jackson. Something in the World" at GAM–Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan, Italy (2023); "Suzanne Jackson: Listen’ N Home" at The Arts Club of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois (2022); "NEWS!" at Ortuzar Projects in New York (2019); and "Suzanne Jackson: Suggestions from Nature" at Temporary Agency in Ridgewood, New York (2015), among others.

Suzanne Jackson's Art Style

Suzanne Jackson's artistic practice is characterized by experimentation across various mediums, encompassing drawing, painting, printmaking, bookmaking, poetry, dance, theater, and costume design. In her lyrical works from the 1960s and 70s, figures and recurring symbols emerge through multiple layers of acrylic wash on canvas, resulting in ethereal paintings where the boundaries between depicted elements become fluid and indistinct.

Similarly, in her recent anti-canvases, Jackson constructs her artworks with layers of pure acrylic, incorporating ordinary materials such as netting, rods, paper fragments, peanut shells, bamboo bells, and leather string. The artist's handmade gestures, including pinching, crimping, and pleating, interact within a translucent materiality that imparts each composition with a distinctive and luminous dimensionality.