Former San Diego artist featured in first retrospective exhibit

By: BARBARA HENRY - Staff Writer | Wednesday, December 19, 2007 11:30 AM PST ∞

SAN DIEGO ---- The signature piece in the new retrospective exhibit of San Diego artist Everett Gee Jackson's work carries the title of "Spring in San Diego," but don't expect to find an identifiable local landscape or even spring flowers.

That wasn't Jackson's style.

He favored the symbolism of the classic Mexican muralists from the late 1920s and early '30s, and focused more on form and shape than replicating exactly what he saw, said Scott Atkinson, chief curator for the San Diego Museum of Art.

Now fairly unknown, Jackson was considered a rising star in the U.S. art world in the late 1920s, the exhibit catalog notes.

"As the numerous newspaper references confirm, Jackson was, for a brief time during the mid- to late-1920s, considered among the most 'ultra-modern' painters working in the United States, and he was perhaps the only artist on the West Coast conversant in the Mexican mural style," it states.

Atkinson put together the Jackson exhibit, which runs through Feb. 10 at the museum in Balboa Park. Covering Jackson's peak productive period from 1920 through 1955, it is the museum's fifth exhibit of the former San Diego resident's work (the others occurred during Jackson's lifetime).

"There have been other exhibitions done, but never a proper retrospective," Atkinson said.

Born in 1900 to ranch owners in a tiny east Texas town, Jackson enjoyed a long and mostly trouble-free life, he added. Jackson had the financial support to live as an artist right in the early part of his career ---- his mother found oil on the family's land.

After attending the Art Institute of Chicago, Jackson journeyed across the border into the Mexican art scene of the 1920s, living in small villages and painting everyday life until moving back to the United States in the spring of 1927.

"He was actually down there when (Diego) Rivera was beginning to paint," Atkinson said, later adding, "Other than Paris, (Mexico) might be the most important art center at that moment."

Walking through the museum's new exhibit, people can watch Jackson's transformation from a more conventional impressionistic style to a lover of the modernistic look.

In the 1923 painting "Cotton Pickers, East Texas" the field crew members are essentially dots within a landscape of light-dappled trees and cotton plants. But by 1926, the people frequently come to the foreground of Jackson's paintings and they're classic images of Mexican peasants, Atkinson said.

Jackson eventually moved to San Diego after marrying a local girl, Eileen Dwyer, and had the first-ever exhibit of his work there in 1926 at an gallery run by an acquaintance of his mother-in-law. That display of his work and several that followed in other parts of the country generated a publicity buzz for Jackson, the museum catalog notes.

Luck continued to favor the young artist. The precursor to San Diego State University ---- San Diego State Teachers College ---- hired him as an art professor in 1930.

"His tenure would ultimately span 33 years and connect him personally and artistically with San Diego for the remainder of his life," the catalog states.

That's evident in the pictures he chose to paint in the 1930s and '40s ---- sailors on shore leave.

"The people he saw in San Diego that interested him were the true outsiders, were the sailors," Atkinson said.

However, he wasn't on the fringes of San Diego life ---- he was a celebrated painter, who eventually became head of SDSU's art department, and his wife was a society editor for the local newspaper, Atkinson said.

As the 20th century drew to a close, Jackson died at age 95.

"As I say in the beginning of the catalog, he lived a very charmed life," Atkinson said.

Contact staff writer Barbara Henry at (760) 901-4072 or bhenry@nctimes.com.

"Everett Gee Jackson/San Diego Modern, 1920-1955"

When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays; open until 9 p.m. Thursdays; through Feb. 10

Where: San Diego Museum of Art, 1450 El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego

Admission: $10, general; $8, seniors; $7, students/young adults; $4, youth, 6 to 17

Info: (619) 232-7931

Web: www.sdmart.org