a heron amongst the storm
The multi-toned background that defines Jackson’s image calls to mind a verdant setting of lush tropical foliage, into which the delicate outline of the titular heron appears to blend and dissolve. Through a continual process of overpainting, the artist has slowly obscured the details of this scene, including the hunched figure of a man (the artist’s father) cutting coconuts, whose presence represents comfort and strength, just as the bird symbolises longevity and persistence in the mind of the artist. The symbolic character of the image is further reinforced by a sense that the storm in question is in fact metaphorical in nature – mirroring the artist’s own internal struggles.
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).
