Kurt Jackson, Artist

 

I reckon it was during lockdown that most people dared actually admit that contact with nature could contribute something positively to our lives and maybe even more so for those in need of healing and help, whether physically or mentally. As a bit of a rural bloke I know personally that I am far more relaxed when in the great outdoors, in contact with nature and my creativity goes hand in hand with that need. A few recent poems of mine that illustrate this: 

This Spring 

 
They say the birdsong is louder this year  
The grass is greener  
The bees buzzier  
The nature stronger  
To those forced to look  
Enforced, confined in lockdown  
Tied to urban boredom  
They notice an avian neighbour  
An overhanging branch  
A flower in the border  

 
Nature will always continue  
The seasons will unravel  
One after the other  
As they should  
Despite our own grievances  
Or maybe encouraged and aided  
By the silence on the highway  
And the absence in the skies  
Our fallings and failings  
Our own lockdown  
Unlocks the freedom  
Opens the door  
To all that should be free  
The flower, the bird, the tree. 

Spring Sickness 
 
We sat still side-by-side 
On the bench under the trees  
With primroses at our feet  
And tall skinny saplings all around  
Out there the world is ailing 
The news is of the dying  
The numbers of the falling  
The sickness that is spreading  
When the season is of birth  
An awakening, an opening, a new start  

Fresh green, new growth  
The songs of the trees, the birds and blossom  
A contradictory time  
The deaths and the germination 
Can the nature to the eye,  
Help the news in the ear?  
Or does that contrast  
Make it worse, more obvious? 

I often see my working in situ as a collaboration between me and the natural world My artistic practice takes me outdoors to work with nature directly, on the ground as it were, and these direct experiences are what feed my creativity. It is an engagement but also a collaboration because if allowed both the wildlife and the elements will become involved, steer the art, make their own marks but I relish the wild where plants and animals do their own thing. The freedom of my mark making equates with the elemental freedom of nature. 

 

I am fascinated by the variety and eclectic mix of life but also alarmed by the loss of species through extinction and habitat loss and climate change. I want to make work about the subject, an altar to worship this diverse life in all its curious, bizarre, weird and delightful forms on. We need to appreciate not just the the strange and rare but also the mundane and common; those animals and plants that live with us side by side. 

 

The natural world is where the elements collide, nature thrives and we experience the environment in its raw state. For me it is my workplace, a studio as well as a location for relaxation and contemplation. Here I draw and paint, find inspiration and witness nature at first hand. It is precious, challenging, diverse and important; it deserves our respect and care. Here we should tread lightly.

Kurt Jackson 2024 

London Island

We wandered down the street 

To find three bare black trees 

Stuck in the pavement 

Isolated and sparse 

Painted with fumes 

Decorated with polythene litter leaves 

Carrier bag foliage 

Fluttering in their skeletal branches 


To our delight 

A handful of green grass 

Grew at the foot of one 

The only other nature 

These skinny weeds 

Somehow clinging there 

Hanging on 

Surviving 

In this cold hard desert 

Of concrete and tarmac