Kurt Jackson

I went to see a Kurt Jackson exhibition and liked some not not that much of it. Afterward I flipped through this book nd thought, this looks better than what I've just seen, I'll take a risk on it. Having been through it in detail now, I feel the same way; the average standard is much better than I saw at the Victoria Art Gallery.

Jackson approached 32 people he knew, asking them to write a page about their favourite place in Britain which would subsequently go in the book along with the art Jackson made upon visiting each place. It's an eclectic mix of people, from fellow artists to writers to scientists by way of Greenpeace activists and others. I recognised some of the names e.g. Helen Dunmore, Carol Hughes and Michael Eavis.

Most of the favourite places were countryside or wilderness but some were urban. The paintings I liked most were the most straightforwardly representational, as opposed to the collage-style ones. Some of the sculptures were also good, again the most straightforward designs. The painting style is unique, superficially seeming impressionistic but not using the genuine techniques of Impressionism at all.… (más)

The book opens with a conversation between Tim Smit and Kurt Jackson, December 2005, in which the artists discuses his work on this series of paintings, the Thames Project. The bulk of the book however is devoted to the colour plates. There are around 60 colour plates, many of them full page or double page spreads, and almost all are reproduced to a good size, many of them bleed page images. There are a further 35 or more monochrome images, either drawings or photographs. The book includes a list of exhibitions.

This is a large format book 12” x 10” (30.5 cm x 25.4 cm) of 100 pages, hardback. It is beautifully produced in all respects and shows Jacksons imaginative and colourful freely painted river-scapes to advantage, with nothing else in the page to distract other than a discreet descriptive title and date.… (más)