chiara
This graphite drawing illustrates two figures swimming together, both distorted by the water in which they are almost entirely submerged. The subject in the foreground, the namesake of this study, is captured meeting the artist’s gaze directly, while the other figure glances up, either unaware or unbothered by the onlooker’s presence. Like in much of his oeuvre, Jackson’s quick and loose handling of his chosen medium speaks to his preference for spontaneity of execution in favour of a more realistic style of representation. Through his depictions of everyday scenes such as this one, the artist emphasises the visual and symbolic potential latent within the wider landscape of the Caymanian cultural experience.
About the Artist
John Reno Jackson
b. 1995
John Reno Jackson is a Caymanian-American painter. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL) and received his MA in painting from the Royal College of Art, London (2025), where he was the recipient of the Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship. His work explores the possibilities of painterly expression through varying abstract investigations of his chosen medium. He has exhibited at Tern Gallery in the Bahamas and held a solo exhibition, A Heron Amidst the Storm, at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands in 2022. His work is in the permanent collection of NGCI, where it has also featured in various exhibitions such as Island of Women: Life at Home During Our Maritime Years (2020), Reimagined Futures – 2nd Cayman Islands Biennial (2021) and The People’s Collection – A 25-Year Cultural Legacy (2022).
