I stumbled upon this exhibition. If you follow me on Instagram, you would think I’m this super artsy person and while I have developed an appreciation for art and what it reveals. I wasn’t always into art. I just didn’t think about it much growing up because I was more focused on science and literature but then I noticed the beauty and history in art and design. I also think my love of fashion and food helped further develop my interests in other arts. When I first visited DC in 8th grade I immediately fell in love. DC will always be one of my favorite places, I love the people, food, and the museums. I absolutely adore museums, they’re some of my favorite places to visit and just be. So, the fact that DC has tons of museums and exhibitions that are constantly changing is overwhelming in the best possible way. This feeling is the main reason why I decided to visit DC for a weekend earlier this summer (and every hotel in Maine was booked). I planned to visit three museums: Women in the Arts, Museum of the Palestinian People, and the Hirshhorn, but I ended up visiting a fourth museum the National Gallery of Art. I had never visited the National Gallery of Art before but after seeing some adverts for the Oliver Lee Jackson exhibition on the metro I had to see the paintings in person.
A little background on Oliver Lee Jackson, who’s also one of my top painters of all time, is a multifaceted artist (he’s a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and draftsman). He’s 84 and was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Although currently based in Oakland, CA he started his career through artistic community engagement such as creating an arts program at Pruitt & Igoe (a housing complex in St. Louis) in the 1960s. He also became involved with BAG (the Black Artists Group) as a consultant and collaborator on multimedia presentations for the African American community. He’s been an Artist in Residence and Visiting Artist at numerous institutions like Wake Forest, UC Santa Barbara, Aix-en-Provence, Harvard, and Flint Hill School, to name a few; and his works are in the permanent collections of The National Gallery of Art, MoMA, The Met, LACMA, and the Detroit Institute of the Arts in addition to numerous other public and private collection. You can read more about him here on his website, and you can check out some of my favorite works from his current exhibition which is on view at the National Gallery of Art in DC until Sept 15, 2019, below.
