in the yard
Adopting a representational approach in place of the artist’s more customary abstract style, in the yard depicts a single figure holding a drum, set against a dizzying array of shapes and marks that allude to the Island’s thick tropical foliage. Typical of Jackson’s work, the brushwork, composition and colours are intended to showcase the hand of the artist and to emphasise painterly impact and passing impressions in place of exact representation. Through this series of preparatory studies, the artist seeks to explore the atmosphere of the contemporary Caymanian moment, as well as the essence of the people and the things that inhabit it.
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).
