The Lighthouse

Towards the centre of the Kintyre Peninsula on the west coast of Scotland there is a small and shallow loch. It’s just half a mile long with an average depth of 4.5 feet making it the winter home to some of the world’s rarest geese as well as the starting point for a productive journey by the celebrated artist Kurt Jackson.

Jackson’s travels began in Spring 2012 when he left Tangy Loch to follow this stream on the west coast of Kintyre. The result is Kurt Jackson – The Burn . This exhibition of new work will be on show at the renowned Lighthouse in Glasgow from March 18-28. An exhibition embracing the multi faceted nature of Jackson’s work – canvases, works on paper, print making and sculpture  – creating a palpable sense of the journey from the moor to sea over the surface of colour -saturated and heavily textured canvases and boards. His compositions immerse you in a stream of environmental awareness through an immediate engagement with the flux and flow of the natural world.

As Jackson states: “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; 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 past the mill and down to that dark coast with my pencil line and paintbrush stroke, 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 4 kilometres but as resonant and diverse as any River Thames, Clyde or Forth; a small world but encompassing all those serpentine 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 with erosion and deposition; supporting its own very personal and pertinent biodiverse communities – colonies of plants and animals clinging to the banks and bathing in those waters. A world in microcosm.”
Born in Dorset, Jackson graduated from St Peter’s College, Oxford with a degree in Zoology whilst attending The Ruskin College of Art, an unusual combination that shaped the rest of his life. .
Jackson has painted and exhibited his way around the world, hitching across Africa and braving the challenges of the Arctic on his own. In the 1980s he moved to Cornwall with his wife and family but still regularly travels for his work, enriching his paintings with a lifetime of observations of the environment.

Kurt Jackson is an academician at the Royal West of England Academy. He is an ambassador for Survival International and has raised many tens of thousands of pounds through the donation of his works for charities such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, WaterAid and Cornwall Wildlife Trust.
He has been Artist in Residence at Glastonbury Festival since 1999 and has also worked with the Eden Project and the Greenpeace ship Esperanza.
His latest show The Burn runs 18th - 28th March 2013 at The Lighthouse , Glasgow, G1 3NU. In association with Lemon Street Gallery, Truro.
A fully illustrated catalogue featuring all the work and a statement by the artist will accompany the exhibition, on request.

For any additional information on the exhibition, or to request a catalogue, please contact Lemon Street Gallery on 01872275757