Oliver Lee Jackson

Place: St. Louis

Born: 1935

Biography:

Oliver Lee Jackson is an American painter, sculptor, draftsman, printmaker, and educator. He was born in 1935 in St. Louis, Missouri, into an African American family. After graduating from Vashon High School, Jackson attended Illinois Wesleyan University (B.F.A. 1958). He served in the United States Army and was honorably discharged in 1961. He attended the University of Iowa (M.F.A. 1963). In the 1960s, he taught art classes at St. Louis local universities and colleges and remained active in this local community. He was director of program Uhuru at Pruitt and Igoe public housing in St. Louis in 1967 and 1968. He taught at St. Louis Community College (1964 to 1967); Southern Illinois University (1967 to 1969); Washington University in St. Louis (1967 to 1969); and Oberlin College (1969 to 1970). In 1971, he moved to California and joined the faculty at California State University, Sacramento, where he remained until 2002. Jackson was affiliated with the multidisciplinary arts collective Black Artists Group (BAG) in St. Louis through his close friendship with BAG co-founder Julius Hemphill, though he was not an official BAG member. Jackson's paintings are based in figural and gestural forms, and often expressionist in nature. There are a mixture of cultural references and iconography in his paintings including references to historical African art and European Modernism. Photographs of the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960 in South Africa became an inspiration for Jackson in the development of his figurative gestural forms, and resulted in his Sharpeville Series (1968–1977). Jackson’s works are in the museum collections of the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the National Gallery of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; San Jose Museum of Art; the Seattle Art Museum; and many other public collections.