Vanessa Jackson. A Light Here…

About

A Light Here... is our Summer installation – a large-scale work visible from the street while the gallery is closed during August.

“Drawing puts thoughts in, painting puts thoughts out; its like breathing.” In her practice and in her teaching, Vanessa Jackson communicates a powerful curiousity about what it is to paint, about visual systems, geometry, architecture, the symbolism of colour, and how an artwork can animate perceptual experience.

Geometry is a long-term interest that underpins the form and function of her paintings. “I became interested in geometry because it was a visual system that already existed, carrying its own diverse and multi-layered history; geometry signifies perpetual enquiry and a testing ground.” In her paintings and wall installations Jackson has developed an astounding and passionate dance with line, shape and colour. She explores the properties of space – forming three dimensional scenarios in two dimensional form by manipulating illusionistic space. Intense, saturated colour is a hallmark of her work, as is ambition and scale; her 2008 installation at Sadlers Wells Theatre Vertigo in Three Parts, was 10 metres high and spanned three storeys.

There is no figurative representation in Jackson’s paintings yet there is a sense that she leads us into heightened space and time – “the making process is like travelling through until the work becomes the representation of perception.” Her paintings can often suggest a space you can walk into and around – a surreal film set.