Dwayne Butcher: Artist Interview with Jed Jackson 7/5/06

1. DB: What are your methods of visualization? How does your creative process begin?

JJ: Images for painting come to me in a number of ways, I have dreamed them, I have manufactured them by deliberate and painful brainstorming, I make notes, sketches, clip photos from newspapers and magazines, describe the work in prose, work out compositions in thumbnails and on and on. I trust the ideas that come in an inspired flash, out of the sub-conscious, more than the deliberate ones, but the deliberate ones are more workmanlike.

2. DB: What exhibit or piece you have seen has most influenced your work and why?

JJ: I have responded most over the years to the paintings, prints, photos and graphic design that developed during the Belle Epoque and up until about 1950. I love Film Noir and Stanley Kubrick. I like John Heartfield, Grosz, Beckmann, Dix, Schad and the Neue Sachlichkeit artists as much as any. I like L'autrec, Jacques Louis David, early Degas, et al. I go for gritty realism and am a bit of a Nietzschean/ Zola-fan in this regard. I like recent artists like Currin but am not quite convinced by them. If given a choice, I would look at Velasquez, Daumier and Goya before more recent artist's, though I think Salle has broadened the range of possibilities a lot.
I like art that has a social purpose other than decoration of upscale homes, though I am certainly interested in that when it is well done, which is rare.

3. DB: As some of your work is politically themed, what kind of legacy is possible for such work? What role does political art play in the contemporary art world?

JJ: All art is political. All human action is inherently political. I am not religious therefore I agree with the beat poet Gary Snyder when he says"Morality is Social Protest". That rings like the truth to me.
Political art is evidence of the cultural effect of political decisions on individuals and groups. Political artists can literally persuade and change minds, for good and ill. A case in point, Leni Riefenstahl. I deeply believe that artists and intellectuals should question authority and speak truth to power. I believe the desire for power is immoral.

4. DB: Explain your work in five words or less.

JJ: "I'm [It's] not so tough". ( the last words of Rico in "Public Enemy")

5. DB:What is your favorite - movie? book? color? smell? food?

JJ: Movie - Clockwork Orange, Book - The Sun Also Rises, Color - Violet, Smell - Linseed oil and turpentine, Food - hot dogs.