Exhibitions
KEITH JACKSON + DESMOND LEWIS: TO TILL A SEED
The Red Arrow Gallery / 919 Gallatin Ave. , Suite #4 May 18 - June 29th
Keith Jackson, Desmond Lewis
Red Arrow Gallery is honored to announce, To Til a Seed, a dual presentation from artists, Keith Jackson & Desmond Lewis. The exhibition opening on May 18th will contain four oil paintings depicting sharecropping and tenant farmers from Jackson’s Southeastern Missouri upbringing and a site-specific installation ‘cotton-picker cab’ enclosing a small church pew, with illegally tinted-windows and sermon-laden audio, from Desmond Lewis.
The pairing of these artists work comes on the heels of their time spent together at the prestigious Skowhegan Artist Residency program where the two met in 2022 and soon acknowledged their similarities in person and practice, although nearly three decades apart in age.
Filled with lush blooms of cotton, green forestry, and rolling meadow. These paintings of mixed media with the usage of oil, sand, and molding paste speak to the complex histories of the landscape I was raised in. Grounded in the histories of the southeastern region of Missouri, my work tends to the stories of sharecroppers and tenant farmers displaced by the government programs known as the “Ditch Project,” and the “Agricultural Adjustment Act of the New Deal,'' that activated the Sharecroppers strike of 1939. Although this history deeply affected my family and the community I was in, this history was never taught or spoken about during my years growing up there. These paintings serve as an opportunity to both address and learn more about the history of the context I was raised in. - Keith Jackson, To Til a Seed, statement.
Image: Keith Jackson, Thomas, 2024, 48x60, Oil on canvas with sand and molding paste
