Vanessa Jackson RA (b. 1953, UK) is a prominent figure on the British art scene since the 1970s. Her geometric paintings play with space, architecture, and visual perception. Jackson’s use of semi-hard-edged shapes and colours intertwines the historical tradition of abstract painting as a canonical genre with optical and spatial illusions. With her 2021 project, “Piccadilly Art Take Over,” she surpassed the limits of the canvas to explore the urban environment and what can be made beyond traditional substrates.

Jackson has been living and working in London since 1971. The same year she embarked upon her fine art education and graduated from St Martins School of Art (BA) in 1975 and the Royal College of Art (MA) in 1978. Throughout Jackson’s entire career as an artist up until 2013, she has been one of London’s leading tutors of fine art, having taught at the Royal Academy Schools from 1998 to 2013, the Royal College of Art from 1993 to 2007 and the Winchester School of Art from 1979 to 1997 where she was made Head of Painting in 1988.

Jackson has been a tutor and friend to many successful artists, whom she says she was fortunate to meet and work with during her long and dedicated teaching career as Head of Painting at Winchester School of Art and Tutor at the Royal College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the UK and internationally, including solo exhibitions starting with the Air Gallery in London in 1981 and more recently at Studio 1.1 Gallery in 2012, a wall painting at the CPG Café Gallery, London in 2010, and Sadler’s Well Theatre, London with Vertigo in Three Parts, a 10-metre wall painting commissioned in 2008 by Sacha Craddock. Jackson was the Abbey Fellow at the British School at Rome in 1995, undertook Yaddo residencies in 1985 and 1991 in the US, and was a prizewinner of the John Moores Painting Biennale in 1994.