The ‘curse’ of Greg Jackson’s life
Ringgold resident Greg Jackson started painting when he was a cadet at West Point. “I used acrylics,” he says, “because they dried fast and I could throw my painting into a drawer and have my room in order for a surprise inspection.”
Cars were the earliest subjects of Jackson’s paintings. One of his first portraits was of his used 1983 GT Mustang. He painted other cars based on magazine pictures.
Thirty years down the road, Jackson says he has produced more paintings than he can recall — in both acrylic and oil. He special- izes in aviation, automotive and historical topics, but he also does portraits of people and animals and has done numerous paintings on commission.
Jackson is a member of the American Society of Aviation Artists and has won ASAA awards for seven of his paintings at International Aerospace Art Exhibitions. His painting “Waco Red,” which depicts a plane he saw at the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, won the ASAA Nixon Galloway Golden Age of Aviation Award this year and was featured on the cover of ASAA’S spring issue of “Aero Brush.”
By day, Jackson is a senior web graphics designer with a major insurance company, but he says painting and other creative endeavors are always on his mind. “It’s a curse — in a good way. I feel the need to paint or draw or build things, to create.”
Recently Jackson has branched out to a type of painting he says he’s really enjoying — customized fantasy portraits. He has painted his oldest son, Eric, as Captain America and his youngest, Evan, as SpiderMan and has done a self-portrait as a Roman Centurion.
When a family friend wanted a portrait of herself as a mermaid — and not an ordinary one, but a warrior mermaid, Jackson was intent on a perfect portrayal. “I set up a 6-foot step ladder in my living room,” says the artist, “and climbed up on it and had her stand below holding a sword in the air and took pictures. Then I put the pictures in Photoshop and worked with angles and lighting.”
Jackson incorporated many personalized elements into the painting. His subject loves whale sharks and octopuses, so instead of giving the mermaid a classic dolphin-type tail, he gave her a “fierce whale shark tail,” and the centerpiece of the breastplate on her mermaid armor is an octopus.
Jackson’s works usually begin with a small sketch and advance to detailed outlines before he touches a brush to canvas. For planes, he gets a hold of blueprints and builds 3-D models on his computer that he can maneuver and study. From there, he creates a more complex composition. Only then does the painting begin.
Some paintings, especially smaller ones, can take as little as a few hours to complete. Some get much more complicated. “Painting is a lot like golf,” says Jackson. “When it’s going well, you feel great about it. When it’s not, when the ball isn’t going where you want it to, it can be very frustrating.”
Jackson’s painting “Purple Haze/going Home” was a good example of the frustrating side of art. The painting depicts a fighter jet, escorted by jeeps and motorcycles trailing the purple smoke that was the signature color of the 510th Tactical Fighter Squadron during the Vietnam War. When he finished the acrylic, he stepped back and realized he hadn’t achieved the effect he wanted. The solution, he decided, was to do it over in oils. He painted over the original until he was happy with it.
Jackson has painted numerous dogs, but a favorite was a 4-pound Yorkie named Smoky. The dog was found in a foxhole in New Guinea in 1944 and was adopted by an Army Air Force corporal who shared his rations with her and took her along on combat missions and as a therapy dog to visit recovering soldiers in the South Pacific. Jackson used his own Yorkie as a model for the painting and portrayed the dog sitting in an Army helmet like the one her owner bathed her in overseas.
Jackson loves painting while people watch and he loves to teach others to paint. He’s set up easel and canvas at Rock City and in public places with other artists during conventions. Two years ago, he and others set up at Kalamazoo Air Zoo Aerospace and Science Museum in Michigan during ASAA’S annual art exhibit and painted while visitors watched.
Jackson believes creating is deeply ingrained in people as beings made in the image of God, “who is the ultimate creator.”