I am interested in exploring how certain ideas, forms, images, narrative structures and traditions are manifest in the present. The process by which they are severed and dismembered from the past is how they are enlivened. – Matthew Day Jackson
Through a diverse range of media, Matthew Day Jackson takes on some of the most essential human themes — life, mortality, creation, knowledge, and perception, among others — all with a probing, analytical mind and a deep sensitivity to material. His recent series of paintings are replicas of Jan Brueghel the Elder’s and Younger’s floral still life works from the 16th and 17th century. And though on the surface they appear to be depictions of lush flower arrangements, at the time of their creation the Brueghels’ paintings were symbols of wealth, an expanding colonial empire, and a growing economy. In Jackson’s reinterpretation, these works make a move into the 21st century through a combination of contemporary techniques and materials that reference craft and domesticity. In this work, the use of patterned fabric and silkscreen give the work a flattened, off-kilter appearance that speaks to the reproducible world of photography and the disjointed world of collage, rather than the beautifying realm of oil painting. Jackson’s work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at museums throughout the US and Europe.