Forest Bean

Suzanne Jackson (American, b. 1944) is known for her unconventional artistic techniques and expansive multimedia practice. Jackson is also a community activist, and she supported the work of her artist peers in Los Angeles where she ran Gallery 32, a gallery and community space, from 1968 to 1970. During the 1970s, Jackson researched Black and Indigenous histories as they connect with the natural world-- an interest that continues to shape her art today. Her works on paper have been a crucial part of her progression from working on traditional stretched canvas to her "environmental abstractions"-- paintings made from layering and incorporating mixed media in such a way as to disrupt the two-dimensional surface. Between 1982 and 1984, Jackson received two fellowships that allowed her to live and work at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts in the San Jacinto Mountains. Here, Jackson focused on smaller drawings and paintings on paper like Forest Bean. She often worked en plein air, combining observations of the natural world with an awareness of the fantastical. At the time, Jackson noted that she was not particularly concerned with figuration or abstraction but rather with making visible the "aura" or spirit that surrounds physical objects. Forest Bean demonstrates Jackson's attention to color and light, and vitality and expressive gesture over mimetic representation.