ARTIST STATEMENT
Black women have always paid attention to and tended to Mother Earth. We fed thousands from Nature’s table out of survival and a love of community. We fled to freedom by navigating swamps and reading the stars. Today Black women influence environmentalism by introducing unique perspectives to fields ranging from fashion to ecology. It’s not just about the environmental hazards we’re exposed to. We see the beauty that is us. We see a world that is possible to create. These portraits represent the ties that bind us to one another as we ground ourselves in Nature’s beauty.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Truth, Beauty, and Pride are the themes of photographer, Natalie Jackson’s work. They come together to tell gripping stories of Black life, past and present. Having lived in Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta, and Charlotte, she gathered experiences, education, and history and returned to the Midwest. She has worked as a staff photographer for Good News Magazine in Atlanta, Georgia to a medical photographer for Soderstrom Skin Institute in Peoria, Illinois. Solo exhibitions of Crowns of Empowerment in Time Gallery 2017, Contemporary Art Center of Peoria 2017, SAUK Community College 2019, Macomb Art Center 2020, and McLean County Art Center 2020. Solo exhibition, And Still I Rise, highlighted her work’s connection to The 1619 Project. Her piece, The Juxtaposition of Ebony, was purchased and presented to Treyvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Luncheon in January 2022, by the City of Peoria’s Employees for Community Concerns. She’s been awarded several photography awards including the Award of Excellence at the Peoria Fine Art Fair 2018, and First Place Photography in Decatur Fine Art Fair 2019. She was a winner of Art Pop in 2019 and Sky Art in 2021 which resulted in billboards of her work displayed throughout the region for an entire year. In 2022 she won the Purchase Award for her piece Triptych Warrior in National Juried Exhibition at Buchanan Art Center. March 2023, she won Best of Show, in Central Illinois Artist Organization exhibition in Peoria, Illinois, for her piece Feeling Butterflies.
© Natalie Jackson