Barbara Jackson

Other Names: Barbara Elizabeth Jackson (née Cronyn)

“My subject is landscape because I respond so strongly to the country and nature in every season: to the shape of the land, its colours, and textures, the patterning of its shapes, of objects upon the land and the sun and the shadow on it; the way the land rises and folds and falls is sensuous and moves me. I am aware of the underlying structure; of its richness, of the interaction of it with our farmers, and the implications of all this to all of us.”
– Barbara Jackson (Artist statement, exhibition pamphlet for Landscape from Two Perspectives, April 7 – 27 1989. Simcoe, Ontario, Lynnwood Art Centre, 1989.

Barbara Jackson (née Cronyn) was born in 1922 in London, Ontario to the prominent Cronyn family. In 1939 she completed her high school education at King’s Hall, Compton (KHC) a girl’s boarding school in Quebec (now the co-educational Bishop’s College School) and went on to receive a secretarial degree. She married Lieutenant George Ernest Jackson, Royal Canadian Regiment in 1942, and the couple initially settled in Brockville, Ontario.

In the 1970s Jackson enrolled in the special adult art program at London, Ontario’s H.B. Beal Secondary School, where she spent four years as a part-time student, before studying painting, drawing, and art history part-time for three years at Western University.

While also a photographer, Jackson is best known as a painter and her work can be found in the collections of Museum London and McIntosh Gallery, Western University. Jackson’s paintings often focused on nature and landscapes. In a September 1972 exhibition at the Landon branch of the London Public Library, Jackson displayed 16 works created over the preceding 14 years, with just a single painting including a person – and even then, the figure was painted against a landscape. In early 1974, along with fellow London artists and Beal classmates Sue Boone and Nan Paterson, Jackson’s work was exhibited at Nancy Poole’s Studio in London, Ontario.

Barbara Jackson passed away in 2011, in Toronto, Ontario.

Biography by Samantha Merritt and Luvneet K. Rana

 

SOURCES

“Barbara Elizabeth (Cronyn) Jackson.” The Globe and Mail, June 15-16, 2011. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/theglobeandmail/obituary.aspx?n=barbara-elizabeth-jackson-cronyn&pid=189948317.

Crawford, Lenore. “Artists display diversity in exhibit.” The London Free Press, January 9, 1974.

Crawford, Lenore. “Landscapes dominate Barbara Jackson show.” The London Free Press, September 8, 1972.

Mitchell, Ann (ed.). BCS Bulletin 45 (1), April 1986. Bishop’s College School.

“Engagements.” The Globe and Mail, February 28, 1942.

“Family Church in London Setting for Barbara Cronyn’s Wedding to Lt. G.E. Jackson.”
The Globe and Mail, March 21, 1942.

“London Society News.” The Globe and Mail, December 10, 1937.

McIntosh Gallery, Western University. “Record of Permanent Collection – Barbara Jackson.” McIntosh Gallery Curatorial Study Centre.

Skipper, Robert and Barbara Jackson. Landscape from Two Perspectives, April 7 – 27 1989. Simcoe, Ontario: Lynnwood Art Centre, 1989. Exhibition pamphlet.

Last Updated on May 17, 2021 by McIntosh Gallery

 

See also: Sue Boone; Lenore Crawford; Nancy Geddes Poole

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