Born in 1966 and raised in the rural farming community of Essex, Missouri, Keith Jackson now lives and works in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Working as a building contractor for most of his life, it's only been in the last few years that Jackson began self-identifying as an artist and devoting his full time to his painting practice. While he may not have fully embraced painting until later in life, the self-taught artist has already begun to catch the attention of the art world - having his first solo exhibition open last year at Steven Zevitas in Boston, he spent this summer in residency at Skowhegan, and now this September, Charles Moffett will present his work in New York for the first time at The Armory Show.
For Jackson, painting is his way of capturing and communicating the simultaneously profound yet every-day memories of his childhood growing up in Essex in the 1970s. He has a deeply-held passion for his family roots - one of nine siblings, his father and older siblings supported the family by working on local farms and his mother kept everything going at home. As the second-youngest child, many of his paintings capture his older siblings at moments that he wouldn't be able to naturally recall, drawing upon treasured black-and-white family photographs and the stories he and his siblings tell one another to inspire his paintings. Now that his parents have passed, as well as one older brother, and the remainder have settled all across the country, he approaches his paintings as a way to preserve the moments and memories they've shared, and hopefully evoke such reflections in his viewers as well.
