Vanessa Jackson

Vanessa Jackson studied at St Martin’s School of Art 1971-75, and at the Royal College of Art 1975-78. She was president of the New Contemporaries in 1975 and since her first one-person show at the Air Gallery, London in 1981 she has exhibited widely in Britain and abroad. Exhibitions that she has participated in have included New Contemporaries, the John Moores Painting Prize, and more recently one-person shows at Art Inc, New York (2003), Keith Talent Gallery, London (2005), Studio 1.1 (2005) and Poussin Gallery (2006).

Special commissions have included a 10 metre wall painting, Vertigo in Three Parts, commissioned in 2008 by Sacha Craddock, and a wall painting for the Café Gallery in Southwark Park titled Throwing Shapes, commissioned by Rebecca Geldard in 2010.

Recent Group Shows have included ‘Warped: Painting and the Feminine’ at Angel Row Gallery in Nottingham, ‘Geometry and Colour’ at the Poussin Gallery, London and in 2011, ‘Zig Zag’ at the Charlie Dutton Gallery, and ‘Geometrickish’ at the Cello Factory.

Jackson has participated in a range of exhibitions internationally from shows in Botswana to Bergen, and New York to Tokyo.

In 2007 her interview with Rebecca Fortnum was included in the book, ‘Contemporary British Women Artists: In Their Own Words’ and her work was included in the 2011 book ‘Painting; Documents of Contemporary Art’ edited by Terry R. Myers.

Jackson was Head of Painting at Winchester School of Art 1988-97, and MA and Research Tutor at the Royal College of Art 1993 -2007. She is presently Senior Tutor at the Royal Academy Schools.

Since being a student at St Martin’s in the 1970’s Jackson’s painting practice has developed an approach to questions of geometry and colour in relation to abstract painting, informed by phenomenological thinking.

• Royal Academy of Arts