Reviews

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 22 March 1967 Stronger Exhibition by Arts Society

The exhibition of members’ work which marks the opening of the F.S. Grant Gallery at the Auckland Society of Arts is a much stronger exhibition than we have been accustomed to at the society and certainly shows more evidence of an attack of liveliness than usual. . . . the visitor to the new gallery . . . should look out for . . . Emily Jackson’s ‘Southern Hills’ with its attack and fine harmonies of brown.

**White Cliffs, Pukearuhe, 1967 - Bledisloe Medal winner, nfs**

Arts Review 1 September 1968
Emily Jackson Bledisloe Medal Winner, 1968

This year's Bledisloe Medal has been awarded to Mrs Emily Jackson who has been a member of the Arts Society for nine years. Mrs Jackson, who has been a working member for the last three years, attended criticism classes, first with Mr Hipwell, then with Cyril Whiteoak. The artist spent two terms with Jan Nigro studying abstract painting and is this year working under Louise Henderson. In the past Mrs Jackson has only painted during the winter months—June to September. Previous showings have been in Society exhibitions and also with the N.Z. Fellowship of Artists. A basic interest in landscape painting is being influenced by an increasing leaning to abstract work.

Hamish Keith, Auckland Star, 11 November 1972. At Moller’s Gallery West Coast paintings – first solo exhibition.

Emily Jackson’s 28 paintings of the West Coast are a fine essay in painterly painting. She is a virtuoso with paint, vigorous, assured and with a fine attack. Paint swirls into clouds, sea, bush, sand, water and hills, sometimes fat and creamy and sometimes dragged drily across light textures.
On Emily Jackson’s West Coast, however it is always raining, the light is always glimmering darkly through clouds. The sea is always angry and the creeks are invariably swollen with run-off from the steep hills. In fact, there is a great deal too much drama in these images and far too little information about the real nature of things. In spite of that criticism, it is difficult to find much fault with a painter who can handle material so well and obviously enjoys doing it. Painting of this quality is a rare sight in local shows, even if less is said about the landscape than the West Coast deserves.

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 21 September 1973
Landscape Artist of Sombre Skill

This is certainly a good time for landscape painting in Auckland. As well as the excellent display by David Barker at Leech’s there is a very interesting exhibition by Emily Jackson at Moller’s Gallery. Where Barker’s work is full of fine detail, Emily Jackson’s is painted with broad, sweeping gesture: where Barker is full of sunlight, Emily Jackson’s scenes are dark and somber.

Her series is called ‘Red at Night’ and makes particularly good use of dark, rich reds and browns. These mould heavy hills, seen against the sky, with sometimes a flash of bright colour that marks a road or water. …

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 1 October 1974
Artist Steps Out of Her Usual Mood

We have become accustomed to somber, damp and thundery paintings by Emily Jackson but her show at Moller’s Gallery explores a different mood.

In these paintings there is a golden plain which stretches away toward a band of blue hills. The paintings are hot, dry and full of shimmering heat.

They are the outcome of a summer holiday in Hawkes Bay and the Manawatu. Although there is change of mood from her usual work, the paintings still have the strength combined with an immediacy of feeling and spontaneity of touch characteristic in Emily Jackson’s work.

In most of the paintings there is an admirable feeling of space and also the viewer has the shock of recognition – this is exactly how the landscape is remembered. Not all the paintings are perfect. There are messy, unresolved patches of paint and on at least one there is a kind of finicky handling that destroys its strength. Over all, this is a narrow exhibition in subject but one that shows that the painter’s work is continually developing and the best paintings are really splendid.

Hamish Keith, Auckland Star, 28 September 1974
Dignity restored to the Landscape

At Moller’s Gallery, Emily Jackson’s exhibition restored to the disreputable style of New Zealand ‘impressionist” landscape painting some long-overdue credibility.

In 28 paintings with the general title “Last Summer,” she patiently and unpretentiously explores a single area of the New Zealand landscape.

The painter’s own note on the show perfectly sums up her intentions: “Almost everywhere were golden landscapes stretching in the sun, with often the everlasting line of the Ruahines in the distance, and always the heat shimmering through the long dry summer. I have tried in these paintings to record some of these impressions.”

… Emily Jackson’s paint is loose and assured. Her composition — the swirling greenish blue sky, the purple line of the Ruahines, the flat foreground, usually with a rift, a hedgerow, or textured paint winding diagonally through it towards the viewer – is simple and effective. In colour and style her paintings are reminiscent of those of the turn-of-the-century painter James Nair. By returning to a valid source she bases her work on a more solid foundation than the slippery non-landscapes of her contemporaries who mine this dried-up style. If she continues in this direction, Emily Jackson may give back considerable dignity to a view of the New Zealand landscape which, so far, has found its greatest expression in the innocuous decoration of certain New Zealand hotels.

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 4 March 1975
Exhibition Adds Spice to Vitality

The festival exhibition “Six Painters” at Moller’s Gallery is a first-class display.
There is work of a high standard by established painters, familiar artists, striking out in new directions, loads of vitality and enough dubious work to add spice to the show.

The most consistently successful group of paintings is a series of King Country landscapes by Emily Jackson. These are exceptionally fine works. Using a restricted palette, she conveys the strength of the hills and the sweep of the countryside but makes each painting a subtle, independent harmony.

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 3 September 1975
Jackson Show Best of Three

There are three exhibitions by women artists in Auckland at the moment and each is, in its own way, excellent.

The most outstanding show is of paintings by Emily Jackson at Moller’s Gallery. They are grouped under the title “Northland – Winter” and show the skies dark with storm clouds and the land drenched with rain.The strength of the paintings is remarkable and so is the energy of the brushwork.

Some of the paintings are of the coast and these have the same richness that made Mrs Jackson’s West Coast paintings in 1972 so memorable. The dark tonality of these paintings is sometimes relieved by a vividly light sky but every painting is a separate harmony that may be based on browns and green.

Peter Bromhead, Auckland Star, 11 September 1975
From Germany, a bucket of cold water

After my knocking of local landscape painting, I don’t suppose Emily
Jackson, who is showing an exhibition of landscapes called Northland Winter at Moller’s Gallery, Queen St., wants to know my view.

However, Ms. Jackson has nothing to worry about. Her paintings are
better than average. They are impressionistic in style, and there is energy and feeling in her work.

They’re all rather romantic paintings, with brooding skies and dark somber land masses. The composition tends to be weak, but the paint is handled with vigour, rather like a Turner or Constable sketch. A show worth a visit.

T. J. McNamara, NZH, 22 June 1976
Dark, Rich And Full Of Space: Waioeka Gorge.

The exhibition by Emily Jackson at Moller's Gallery is a truly remarkable achievement.

It is called "Waioeka Gorge”, and the paintings are based on that spectacular piece of landscape, but they achieve completely independent existence as compositions of colour, form and movement, in their own right.

Emily Jackson's achievement is the more remarkable; because she came fairly late to painting, and, in a comparatively short time, has developed a form of expression that is entirely individual and which she uses with complete honesty and assurance.

She has at her command a variety of atmosphere, as we can see when we contrast the solemn, dark greens of No 2, with the bright, vivid greens that give the light of the sun to No 24. With this variety of effect, she has a style so unmistakably her own that even a small piece of painting is instantly recognisable as hers. There are more than 40 paintings in this show. Most of them are dark and rich and atmospheric, full of space, steep hills and a wet mistiness.

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 23 May 1977
Show Dominated by Mt Egmont

Emily Jackson is having her sixth show at Moller’s Gallery. This time she has turned her attention to Taranaki and all the paintings are dominated by the compelling shape of Mt Egmont.

Mrs Jackson always makes colour do all the work in her painting. Her method is a rapid attack of brushwork to create a maze of patches of colour out of which the form emerges.

The mood of the paintings comes entirely from the harmonies of colour used. In her previous shows there has been a unity of mood throughout the exhibition but here the mountain and its approaches are seen under a variety of conditions.

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 30 July 1979
A Colourful Paradox on Canvas

The exhibition by Emily Jackson at Mollers Gallery is much brighter in colour than most of her previous work, but paradoxically, the most impressive paintings are the darkest ones.

The paintings show no departure from her usual style of dashing paint vigorously on to the canvas in an equivalent of her immediate emotional response to the landscape.

The most impressive work is where her dashing style is under the control of thoughtful, calculated colour harmony. This control is varied between the agitated mood of … "Stormy Landscape" and, by contrast, the cool poise of … "Garden at Dusk." …Though this exhibition is uneven in quality its vigour is a tribute to the continuing power and unfailing inspiration of Mrs Jackson.

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 31 May 1980
Studies of Flowers Stand Out [Garden studies]

These paintings are much more abstract than [Emily’s] previous work. Colour is the key to the quality of this painting.

In the past, Emily Jackson has given us an impressive range of harmonies from sonorous, somber combinations inspired by the West Coast, to spreading, warm, joyous colours taken from the light of summer on wide plains.

In this show the original source is lost in the maze of colour and shape. Colour becomes the whole subject and it is as if we were thrust so close to the garden that we lose the shape of particular things.

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 31 May 1981
Stimulating Work on the Outer - March Journey

An exhibition which does have real energy and attack is the work of Emily Jackson further down Queen St at Moller’s Gallery.

These works are landscapes of the King Country, Wanganui and Manawatu. Emily Jackson has abandoned her flirtation with semi-abstract painting and returned to painting her direct response of the landscape. And a good thing too.

Because of the vigour of her approach there is a tendency to add a touch too many to the paintings, a splash of white or red that upsets the space or the texture of the work. …

Art News, June 1981
Painter of the month

Emily Jackson who was awarded the Ida Eise Prize for Painting in May has exhibited in members’ exhibitions at the Society for the past 15 years. Her work has also become well known to the Auckland art public. …

Emily Jackson is an artist in the romantic tradition. Her winning entry for the Eise Prize is conceived in the same spirit as the Otira paintings of Van de Velden and the storm paintings of Emile Nolde … Emily draws her main inspiration from the open country.

Roger Blackley, NZH, 2 August 1982
Emily Jackson – Recent Paintings - King Country Landscapes

At one time Emily Jackson was at school with Woollaston – one might speculate that a common influence may have encouraged both to devote their lives to painting.

Emily Jackson’s “King Country Landscape” at New Vision is a series of exercises in expressive landscape painting. They deal less with topographical realism – despite the precise geography of the titles – than with the use of loose landscape forms to explore painterly problems. Up close, these paintings are very busy. Jackson has made extensive use of thin “washes” of oil paint that modify existing and subsequent washed and marks. Step back, and a coherent landscape collections before your eyes.

This painter is a subtle colourist. Many works stay safely within the mainstream tradition for which she draws imprecation; the darker, earth-oriented palettes of Van Der Velden or Woollaston, for instance. Some of the nicest effects in this show occur when she breaks into cleaner, higher colours – signifying more light on the landscape, and greater fun with the colourbox.

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 5 September 1983
A Sombre Power Lifts View

The exhibitions this week strike lively but fairly light notes with the exception of a roll of thunder from Gallery Pacific at the bottom of town.

There Emily Jackson is showing her recent work. For all their comparatively small size these landscapes have a sombre power. The sombreness comes from the prevailing earthy tones of the colour and the power from the remarkable vigour of the handling.

Although the places painted by Emily Jackson are recognisable, the quality of the work lies not in the selection of subject but in the way the painter finds an equivalent in paint for the emotion she feels in front of the landscape and the unhesitating drive with which she forces her pigments into swirls and patterns that not only tell us about the nature of the place but also have, in their energy, something of the forces of nature itself.

These paintings are never pretty but they have freedom and majesty. In many ways they are the essence of New Zealand landscape and capture the lonely, empty strength of our countryside.

A typical work is Manawatu Gorge made up of weighty hill and tumult of cloud and river. Equally full of movement and the release of energy is the splendid Clouds over King Country with a rush of water in the centre.

Tidier handling of falling water detracts a little from Awakino but still water contrasts with the steep slopes of Te Henga and touches of white energise Upper Reaches of the Wanganui, a painting which is a good starting point for anyone visiting this fine exhibition.

Leaving they might linger on the vivid light behind the ridge in West Coast a work remarkable in any company of New Zealand landscape painting.

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 3 June 1985
Summer Paintings, John Leech Gallery

There is always something astonishing, too, about the work of Emily Jackson which is at the John Leech Gallery.
The remarkable quality is its sheer abundance and energy. Jackson is attaining more and more freedom. This too, is another unequal show. Because it is so direct, it either succeeds or fails at once. There are no half measures.Most of the paintings find their origin in landscape but in this show the landscape motif is improvised on much more freely than in the past. The strokes of paint no longer just describe forms.

Together they make a metaphor of the forces at work in nature that are never still. This is notable in a restless work such as Engulfing Streams, one of the best in the show.

In work like this there is a tremendous amount of knowledge and technique. This is apparent in detail in such as the edging around the lake in King Country or the shades of blue in the lake in Blue Landscape. The exhibition is most interesting to those who know the artist’s previous work and can see the expansive forces at work. A person coming to the work with no previous knowledge might find the arbitrary nature of many of the passages and colours alienating.

T.J. McNamara, NZH, 10 September 1987
Chase worth the effort,

Jackson's work is always exciting. Her response to the landscape is always so immediate and intense. This exhibition is called Paintings of the Desert Road and she portrays the area in many different moods. Three paintings exactly similar in format — The Brooding Mountain, Mountain Tops and Storm Clouds — show three very different kinds of atmosphere and colour scheme….

Some colour decisions have been sudden and arbitrary and hard to explain in context but the quality of such works as Storm on the Mountains or the brilliant Shepherd's Delight shines through.

Corinne Amber, Nelson Evening Mail, 10 May 1989
Strong forces in work

Middlemarch — Central Otago which is part of a 30-work exhibition at the Suter Gallery until May 21,

… Gallery director Mr Austin Davies says the quality of her work lies not in the fact that the places she paints are recognisable, but in the way she finds an equivalent in paint for the emotions she feels in front of the landscapes.

"The unhesitating drive with, which she handles her pigments tells not only something about the nature of the place, but also have in their energy something of the forces of nature.”"

Emily Jackson — Winner of the A.S.A Autumn Exhibition

One artist spoke with quiet insistence. At first glance I thought it was an energetic young artist paying homage to McCahon, but soon realised that was the work of a mature artist with the control developed over decades of painting.

Elegant yet fresh, spontaneous yet subtle, many layers of pigment giving depth and richness, yet still possessing the intimacy of pages from a sketch book.

Judge — Sylvia Siddell

Further reviews / articles:

Against purity: or, why we need Emily Jackson

Art Sales Digest

Emily Jackson : 'Summer 1985', John Leech Gallery, Auckland

Exhibitions and Awards

Reviews

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