Shane-Jahi Jackson (b.1987 Denver, CO) I’m a self-taught artist that honed my skills over the course of many years the black body and portraiture are central to my practice. I use painting as a tool to bear witness to our lives, our strengths and fragilities. My  work portrays family, friends and still-life floral bouquets to offer my beloved their flowers while they are still here. I include abstract elements to tell a story about  the universe I inhabit and circulate in.

My visual language and vocabulary use orbs and a method of layering to develop textures  to embed the work with deeper hidden meanings and coding. I make use of the classical techniques of portraiture but introduce decorative abstraction, shapes and a painterly collage mechanism to create dense imagery

In my figurative works, I often explore the tension between Black respectability and the freedom to express ourselves without judgment. I seek to inscribe a new narrative about Black bodies that also expresses the complexity of Black sensuality in a world that deems us brutal and erotic.  In essence, I strive to capture Black figures as regal, loved and part of the conversation.

My overall practice communicates an ancestral story about vulnerability and resilience  that implores the viewer to embrace the figures on the canvas and to help save them for cultural erasure.