“…a vermillion stab of phone box, a figure Lowry-like in a street, red brick and honey stone, black yew, the lattice of twiggy garden apple trees…”
Kurt Jackson, 2017
“I positively enjoy the idea of the village; the knowledge that globally people find themselves living in small settlements dotted about the countryside, attached to a lifestyle evolved in that land, that bit of the world. The building materials came from that ground, those stones, those trees. The people lived on that ground, ate from that place – the land sustained and fed them. Now most residents are less dependent on the immediate resources but the ties of the community remain with that common identity – the village survives.
So I decided to make a body of work, a series of paintings about one village, in this case in the Cotswolds. To my eye, the buildings sitting in their countryside that shaped and formed the pattern of settlement holds a visual potential. The rooflines and chimney pots silhouetted against the skies, a wisp of smoke connects an orange chimney pot to a smudged tree clad skyline. The chequerboard of fields leading away from the village boundaries, the gables and windows, tiles and slates shine in the sunlight after a shower. Light against hills and trees behind hedgerows contrasting with the flowing contours from garden to field; all is paintable. A vermillion stab of phone box, a figure Lowry-like in a street, red brick and honey stone, black yew, the lattice of twiggy garden apple trees; all is exciting and a challenge. It is about acknowledging the local vernacular but not being prisoner to it, taking the scenic, the view, the panoramic and making it a good painting. The bucolic need not be chocolate box but the rural, the rustic, is delightful and serious and worthy of attention for the village is a place where the past collides with the present in the real world.”
Kurt Jackson, 2017
Kurt Jackson – A Cotswold Village
October 7 – November 5 2017.
Campden Gallery,
High Street, Chipping Campden,
Gloucestershire, GL55 6AG.
