Books in the Visions of Illinois series

A former student of architecture at the University of Illinois, Kanfer has developed a kinship with the rural regions of the Prairie State. He draws upon a rich background in art, design, and travel to focus on the unique qualities of the midwesten landscape, exhibiting an unusual sensitivity to composition, color, texture, and light. Kanfer isolates singular images--a solitary barn, a rural mailbox atop a roadside post, a red stop sign caught in the nighttime glare of a car's headlight, cornflower blossoms springing from a ditch--as well as broader prairie scenes.

Here are nearly a hundred stunning reproductions (three-quarters in full color) of many of the Illinois prairie landscapes, as well as the cityscapes, townscapes, interior views, works with social and political themes, and murals done by Jackson over the past forty years, all of them reflecting his fascination with the subtle yet pervasive impact of time and light on art and on life. Howard Wooden surveys Jackson's stylistic and technical developments as an artist, beginning with his early black-and-white woodblock prints executed in Mexico in 1949 and 1950 and ending with three large murals painted in the late 1980s, one of which adorns the Illinois State Capitol. Jackson's work, which hangs in the National Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and in many other museums across America, feature images derived, but not copied, from reality. A brief essay by Jackson on his painting technique appears in an appendix.