Oliver Lee Jackson

Kindly donated by the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York.

Over the span of five decades, Jackson has developed a singular body of work over the course of his career, creating complex and layered images in which suggestions of the figure emerge from abstract fields of vivid color. Heavily influenced by Experimental Jazz, Jackson’s paintings are improvisational in approach, as gestural marks become intertwined with vivid swaths of paint and color. Building over time, each work becomes a synthesis of disparate references, spanning from Renaissance painting to Modernism, as well as Jackson’s own studies of African cultures. The resulting compositions eschew a single narrative or reading and instead seek to encourage the viewer to form their own emotional response. Creating multiple points of entry within each painting, Jackson states that his work is “for anybody’s eyes. any eyes will do.”

Oliver Lee Jackson lives and works in Oakland. Jackson first rose to prominence as part of the Black Artists Group, which was founded in St. Louis in 1968 as an interdisciplinary collective of musicians, actors, and visual artists. Earlier this year, Jackson’s work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO, and the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA. Other past institutional exhibitions of Jackson’s work include the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2019, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO, 2012, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, 2002, University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1985, University of California Art Museum, Berkeley, 1983, Seattle Art Museum, 1982, St. Louis Art Museum, 1980, among others. His works are held in the public collections of The Metropolitan Museum, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Modern Art, New York, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Portland Art Museum, Oregon, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Jose Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, Detroit Institute of the Arts, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco among others.