Artist Bio
Char Jackson is a creative professional with over 27 years as an Art Director, Designer and Artist, including 15 years creative leadership at the iconic Hallmark Cards. She has a BFA/Graphic Design with Distinction from the University of Kansas, and a more recent Digital Marketing Certification from Johnson County Community College.
In her personal fine art, Char develops a diverse range of subjects based on her commitment to observethe beauty of a chosen experience, and then translate it into meditative, empathic art. Char practices in a variety of media including soft pastel, oil pastel, charcoal, graphite, pen and ink, colored pencil, acrylic, mixed media, and digital.
Artist Statement
My subjects, chosen and drawn from my daily experiences and travels, bring transcendence to my personal moments. Each piece I contemplate by selection and visual translation into my expession of the joy of participation and existence. They become deeply sacred as I re-experience the moment—stroke by stroke, color by color. The work of art itself becomes an artifact, a recording and evidence of my venturing into a spiritual realm—much comparable to the audio recording of a musician’s act of performance. I create these works not only to document, to heighten, to sacrament my experiences, but also to share them with others.
I invite you to enjoy them, allow them to enrich your experiences and memories of your individual journey—and to relate your day to the universal human experience.
Please reach out with any questions or comments. I would love to hear from you!
Linked in www.linkedin.com/in/charjackson
A bit more about my artistic journey…
One of my earliest memories as a very young child was the intrigue I experienced when studying my great-grandfather Hann’s painting in my grandmother’s living room. A local Kansas City theatre set painter in the 1930’s, he created a moody landscape of a forest stream, the light filtering through the leaves and sparkling on the water and rocks. It evoked a sense of mystery, even sadness.
The thing that I found so entrancing, which resulted in my naming it “The Magic Picture” was the expertise of his loose, painterly strokes which appeared to me as random brush marks and colors when I stood quite close to the painting—soaking up the beautiful colors, shapes, and directions of the strokes. Then I would take slow, deliberate steps backwards, one at a time while studying the painting and finally reaching the miraculous point where the random strokes were magically transformed into the masterful landscape. How did one paint like that—up close so seemingly senseless—yet upon viewing it at the perfect distance that bit of light off-white becomes a highlight on a tree branch, the dark purple-blue transforms to a shadow nestling the rugged river rock resting upon it? Not only was this one of my earliest memories, but I believe it was the foundation and beginning of my passion and fascination for the visual language of art. I was naturally drawn to it as a musician is to their first instrument.
This joy of “The Magic Picture” spread to other activities that I practiced with regularity. Looking at nature while playing outside, riding in a car, I would practice using “Magic Eyes”. I would try to envision the image as a painting with an imaginary viewfinder defining just the right composition. Hands, arms, legs, and facial features mystified me how they changed shape from different viewpoints—how the shape of the light changed to reveal their structure and texture. This was how I first began drawing, trying to capture these elusive shapes that looked one way through visual perspective, knowing that this shape was totally defiant of the actual shape of a leg or arm when viewed from straight on. And so, visual language to me has always held an aura of mystery, magic, and illusion that rendered it precious and sacred to my perception of the world.
With this foundation I was naturally drawn to the Impressionists. For a young woman emerging in the mid-70’s such a genre was long out-of-fashion and even ordinary—mainstream compared to the conceptual expression being pursued by artists of the day. But to me the Impressionists paintings were an extension of my own early recognition of visual translation of the world…it was like finding a long lost friend that I’d never met. The absolute pure colors and loose, luscious strokes mesmerized me. The choice of subject matter—everyday people in everyday activities and locations—verified my deeply-held conviction of the sacredness that occurred through an artist’s translation to a painting or drawing. To this day, this perception is both a driving motivation and immense satisfaction to me.
©Char Jackson Creative LLC