About Rory Jackson
I grew up in Vermont nurtured by a community and family supportive of the arts. Returning to the green mountains each summer to paint the landscape continues to be a main of focus and source of inspiration in my practice. During the winters my family and I head to our quiet home in Ghana, where I spend my time studying seascapes, village scenes and boats, and absorbing into my successes a true vibrancy of life. The balance of the two places keeps my interest in subject matter fresh, while marking each year’s progress in two very different seasons.
Thus far each stage of my development has brought a new dimension of seeing and a deeper understanding of design. What has remained the same through every stage since my childhood is the simple pleasure of watching an image come to life through my eyes, heart and hand. Though it has become my work now and carries with it a pressure to provide, it has added an intensity of focus and an element of faith, which continues to push my work to new heights.
As a painter my aim is to bring to life a presence to the viewer, a relationship between the earth and the people who hold covenant with it. I think Robert Henri best states my feeling of what it means to move forward as an artist when he says, “all outward success, when it has value is but the inevitable result of an inward success of full living, full play and enjoyment of ones faculties.”
I watch my son sit on the floor of my studio with a brush in his hand and paints by his side following his creative intuition, allowing a story to manifest. He has begun as I did, freely exploring the joy of creating art.