Kurt Jackson RWA | The Burn – A Scottish Millstream

Kurt Jackson

RWA (b.1961) The Burn – A Scottish Millstream

In the spring of 2012, I followed the Kintyre peninsula down to its southern end near Campbeltown to arrive by a glinting, rushing burn between banks of celandines and kingcups. I stayed in a big, solid, ancient water mill complete and in perfect working order but still and silent, every functional cog and wheel unworked for 50 years, situated on the north bank of that noisy, bubbling brook; beneath soaring golden eagles and skylarks. I trailed the stream from its loch high on the moor with its prehistoric rock carvings and roaring windfarm, past the mill and down to that dark coast with my pencil line and paintbrush strokes, tracing every curve and meander, overhanging tree and washed rock.

So a journey for the Tangy Burn [and for me] from the source to the sea of only four kilometres but as resonant and diverse as any River Thames, Clyde or Forth; a small world but encompassing all those bends and twists, river cliffs and flood plains; all those falls and eddies, rushes and cataracts. Black water, white water, ochre water, clear water. Moorland, farmland, woodland, coastland.

On a small scale but not of insignificance – every boggy mire of draining moorland bank and flower clad valley side, every stretch holds its own riparian story of evolution; supporting its own pertinent biodiverse communities – colonies of plants and animals clinging to the banks and bathing in those waters. A world in microcosm.

—Kurt Jackson, 2022

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Kurt Jackson painting in Argyll, 2012

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‘A painting of layers both topographically and physically in paint. Made in the studio from a series of studies painted in situ looking down from a vantage point inland to the sea, where the sun breaks through piercing the undergrowth and lighting up the waters behind.’

— Kurt Jackson, 2022

51. Sunlit, 2012 oil and mixed media on canvas, 122 x 122 cm

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‘Jackson’s landscapes are redolent with the echoes of past voices and traces of bygone human presences: the shifting historical relationship between mankind and nature provides a central theme that runs throughout his work.’

— Bill Hare, Kurt Jackson, A New Genre of Landscape Painting, Lund Humphries, 2012

52. There is Only Me and a Crow on this Beach, Below Tangy, Evening, Distant Jura and Ireland, 2012-2022 mixed media on museum board, 60 x 60 cm

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53. Primroses in a Mug from Tangy Mill, 2012 mixed media, 12 x 16 cm

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54. Morning Burn Mutter, 2012 mixed media on paper, 37 x 16 cm

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55. Tangy Watermill, 2013 unique bronze on slate and oak base, H35 x W20 x D15 cm

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56. In the Balance, 2013 unique bronze on slate and oak base, W32 x W20 x D17 cm

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57. Port na Tangy, on the Rocks above the Incoming Tide, Dodging the Showers, 2012–2022 mixed media on paper, 57 x 62 cm

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‘The eagles looked down on me just as I looked down into the stream’s waters. The small valley was dressed in pink and bracken filled waiting for the Spring’s greenery to burst forth. I painted this canvas spread out on the bank beneath that eagle, next to that stream in between the seasons.’

— Kurt Jackson, 2022

58. Golden Eagle Above Me, 2012 mixed media on linen, 183 x 122 cm

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KURT JACKSON RWA (b.1961)

Kurt Jackson was born in Dorset in 1961 to artist parents. He studied Zoology at the University of Oxford, and attended painting courses and the Ruskin College of Art. He has been exhibiting extensively across the United Kingdom and internationally since the 1980s. In 2015 Kurt Jackson and his wife founded the Jackson Foundation in their home of St Just in Penwith, exhibiting contemporary exhibitions in partnership with a variety of environmental and non-profit organisations.

Kurt Jackson’s artistic practice ranges from his trademark visceral plein-air sessions to studio work and embraces an extensive range of materials and techniques including mixed media, large canvases, printmaking and sculpture. He focuses on the complexity, diversity and fragility of the natural world. This has led to artist-in-residencies on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, the Eden Project and for 20 years he has been artist-in-residence at Glastonbury Festival.

Five monographs on Jackson have been published by Lund Humphries depicting Jackson’s career so far, he regularly contributes to radio and television and was the subject of an award-winning BBC documentary, ‘A Picture of Britain’. Jackson was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (DLitt) from Exeter University. He is an Honorary Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford and an academician at the Royal West of England Academy. He is also an ambassador for Survival International and frequently works with Greenpeace, WaterAid, Oxfam and Cornwall Wildlife Trust and a patron of human rights charity Prisoners of Conscience.

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RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2022 Mermaid’s Tears, Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh Kenidjack: A Cornish Valley, Jackson Foundation Gallery, St Just, Cornwall Biodiversity, Oxford University Museum of Natural History Clay Country, Jackson Foundation Gallery, St Just, Cornwall Mermaids’ Tears, Jackson Foundation Gallery, St Just, Cornwall Biodiversity, Southampton City Art Gallery 2021 The Green Ways, Messum’s Yorkshire and Messum’s Wiltshire, Tisbury, Wiltshire Wheat: Plough to Plate, Jackson Foundation Gallery, St Just, Cornwall Clay Country, Wheal Martyn China Clay Museum, St Austell, Cornwall Clay Country, Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum, Worcester Biodiversity, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath Mermaid’s Tears, Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh Kenidjack: A Cornish Valley, Jackson Foundation Gallery, St Just, Cornwall Orwell’s Jura, Morag’s Skye, Messums, London 2020 A Prehistoric Cornwall, Jackson Foundation Gallery, St Just, Cornwall Fonthill, Messums Wiltshire, Tisbury, Wiltshire Port Quin, Messums Wiltshire, Tisbury, Wiltshire Art/Music/Activism – Kurt Jackson and Greenpeace at Glastonbury Festival, Jackson Foundation Gallery, St Just, Cornwall 2019 The Stour, Messums, London. Frenchman’s Creek, Jackson Foundation Gallery, St Just, Cornwall

RECENT GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2022 Tideline & Ground, Messums Wiltshire 2021 Festival of Drawing, Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro Unsettling Landscapes: The Art of the Eerie, St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery, Lymington Unkempt, Messums Wiltshire Royal West of England Academy 2020 The Seasons: Art of the Unfolding Year, St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery, Lymington, Hampshire Royal West of England Academy, Bristol

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

The Box, Plymouth The Met Office, Exeter New County Hall, Cornwall Penlee House Gallery & Musuem, Cornwall Royal West of England Academy, Bristol Slate Valley Museum, Granville, New York Southampton City Art Gallery St Peter’s College, University of Oxford Tate Britain, London University of Edinburgh University of Exeter Victoria and Albert Museum, London Victoria Art Gallery, Bath Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum

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