Jethro Jackson: Where the Ground Breathes.
Dr Matt Retallick.
In the solitude of his studio, Jethro Jackson paints in search of company. His work, a meditation on the communion between man and nature, invites the wild in. Landscapes become stage sets, and a cast of birds, goats, horses, and other beasts’ steps forward to play its part. Whether wandering through moorland, tracing the woodland edge, or navigating the shifting chaos of a cityscape, he gathers glimpses: fleeting moments, gestures, and chance happenings that later surface in his paintings. These fragments are spliced together in what he describes as an excavation, an act of uncovering, of feeling his way through memory and instinct toward something true. A journey of discovery.
I once asked him how he arrived at a particular painting. He looked at it for a moment and said he couldn’t remember, and I believe him. The studio tells the story more clearly: paint tubes lie crumpled from sudden bursts of inspiration, splatters streak the floor from impulsive motion, and a half-eaten sandwich rests on a nearby table. His brushes, still wet and swollen with colour, seem to hover in pause, mid-thought, interrupted.
He paints in a trance-like state, synapses firing as old memories entwine with new impressions and a story begins to take form. Charged energy courses through him, spilling out onto the canvas in strokes of rusty crimson, neon pink, lapis lazuli. It’s an intuitive collision, tense, unpredictable. A journey into the unknown, unfolding moment by moment until Jethro finally steps back to see what has emerged. If the painting speaks, if it becomes company, it is complete. If it remains silent, he scrapes it away, partly or sometimes entirely, and begins again. Each canvas is a battleground in his ongoing search for feeling, for presence, for dialogue.
This process has sharpened his sensitivity to colour’s power and potential. I once accompanied him to L. Cornelissen & Son, the legendary London art shop, and watched him select paints, holding each tube up to the light, describing the shades in personal terms, arranging them side by side until something sparked. The same instinct guides him in the studio, where he works in clear, defined series. Each painting surrounds and informs him, urging the next forward. Here, colour holds memory, paint speaks truth, and the earth itself rises through the brush. Welcome to the world of Jethro Jackson, where paint carves like wind against stone, stories weave through canvas like roots, and every stroke echoes the breath of the land.