Hiding in Plain Sight
- Hannah Tapping
- Aug 1
- 5 min read
Words by Hannah Tapping
Jethro Jackson’s new body of work explores the universal tension of struggle and survival, and the life force that binds us and all life in this fragile existence.
As a new exhibition of Jethro Jackson’s paintings goes on show at Projects Twenty Two gallery this summer, I spoke to Jackson and exhibition curator Dr Altair Brandon-Salmon about how Moor Lands finds a rhythm with the landscape.
Deeply embedded within the sublime, harsh atmosphere of North Cornwall, this work rhymes with the shifting layers of colour and texture that mark the land. Jackson’s practice, shaped by modernist painters like Peter Lanyon, reveals a Cornish world that is haunted by ghosts and animals. He makes us see the world anew, as though he has the agile, hovering perspective of a kestrel.
Drawing together new work alongside drawings and prints, the exhibition will show how Jackson moves across different media where he finds the space between representation and abstraction. It will show how his process responds to the weight of paint and the pull of graphite and show his engagement with the elements of an ever-fluctuating landscape.
LEFT: Hipparleon - oil and gold on board - 30x30cm
RIGHT: Zeus - oil and gold on panel - 10x10cm
“How to paint? It’s the question every artist must face – a matter of wrestling an image out of pigment, laboriously, the paint has its own force which the artist must contend with,” comments Brandon-Salmon. “In Jethro Jackson’s work, the burrs of paint stand proud from the surface, leaving a rough texture that calls out to the audience to run its hand over the crags of paint. This is the pull, the dangerous seduction, of paint which can beguile audience and viewer alike.
“This perhaps accounts for the often-shocking beauty of Jackson’s painting: in Moor Lands, there are electric yellows, ice purples, reds like blood clots, browns full of rich, creamy tones. It’s a Technicolor profusion, born out of a deep engagement with North Cornwall, but Jackson does not want to create a window into that landscape, but rather he attempts to conjure up a portal through which the audience can enter into a world of his own making.”
LEFT: Hecate - oil and gold on board - 50x40cm
RIGHT: Clotho - oil and gold on board - 40x40cm
Jackson’s practice as an artist has substantially evolved over the last five years. His relationship to both landscape and painting have shifted in their approach. These paintings are as a result of time spent walking Rough Tor on Bodmin Moor, a landscape carved by wind, stone and untold centuries. Jackson tells me: “There’s a primal stillness to it, layered with Cornish and Celtic memory, a deep quiet where survival once meant shelter, food, warmth – nothing more, nothing less. What struck me is how this place, humble and overlooked, holds the same forces that drive myth: life and death, protection and sacrifice, power and presence.”
“I began seeing the animals – a fox, a raven, an ewe and her lamb – not just as creatures of the moor, but as symbols, witnesses, beings who remember.,” says Jackson. “I gave each a golden eye, not for decoration, but to say: They see. Into this local world I introduced Greek mythology; not to overwrite it, but to tie it to the cosmos. To show that what happens to a beast on the back of Bodmin is just as mythic as what happens to Hera, Zeus, or Apollo. The gods’ struggles are our own, and vice versa.”
LEFT: Hades - oil and gold on panel - 10x10cm
RIGHT: Hound - oil and gold on board - 30x30cm
Brandon-Salmon adds: “There’s a sort of existential quality to nature. It’s really about survival, life, death, these kind of basic but essential poses. Jackson is drawn to these moments. However, in these works we are not just looking at nature; nature is looking back at us, assessing us. While this may unsettle us, it’s a salutary reminder of the rawness and violence of nature, something that can be so easily sentimentalised. While nature has moments of tremendous beauty, Jackson is looking for those spaces in between, and that’s why I think you often see these animals in repose.
“It’s important to think about Jackson’s work beyond the usual coordinates of Cornish painting. Cornwall is no pastoral salve, or romantic haven, but an ancient, elemental landscape, intensely alive, where people and animals can often be interchangeable forms stalking the land. It suggests a post-war modernist like Peter Lanyon, who created his own distance by taking to the sky in gliders, which led to work such as Soaring Flight (1960), seeking to convey the experience of flight through the swipes of brushstrokes, loaded with blue and red oil paint. Paint and sensation become intertwined, just as in Atropos, a small painting by Jackson of a sheep’s head (opposite), its eyes meeting the viewer’s. This is what it feels like to be addressed by a non-human consciousness.
“The animals have gilded, golden eyes looking back at the audience, proclaiming that they see us. These are not experiences which find an easy vocabulary, but somehow are able to be transformed into paint, creating an object which can embody these experiences.” Jackson’s breakthrough in his practice was as a result of trying to find a rhythm in his painting that would explain what he was feeling and experiencing. It’s not just about vision. It’s not just about how the world appears. It’s how does the world feel? How do we experience this world? The work is sculptural in its texture, paint extends beyond the edges and within its thick layers, there are shadows of previous versions, right? You want to run your hand over them to feel the texture, as if it’s the landscape, itself on the canvas.
The upcoming show has works of various scale. When you enter into the gallery, some of the paintings emerge from the wall towards the viewer, others recede. It’s almost as if you’re walking into the very landscape: “but whose land does the audience traverse in Moor Lands?” asks Brandon-Salmon. “Jackson’s land, of course. The works are alive with the buzz and hum of energy and emotion, these objects of pigment and board congealing before the audience’s eyes into something approaching the presence of a living creature. He finds life where the viewer least expects it.”
Jackson concludes: “These paintings are about that shared thread; the lifeline that connects mortals and gods, myth and mud, presence and memory. Whether it’s a divine raven cursed for telling the truth, or a worn old sheep alone on a hill, the weight is the same. That’s the key to all of it: Every problem, every being, every myth – matters. Equally.”
Jethro Jackson: Moor Lands shows at Projects Twenty Two, Off Trewiston Lane, St Minver, Wadebridge, PL27 6PY from 13th August to 6th September 2025.
