ART REVIEW : Oliver Jackson’s Fluid Realm

One of the things that dawns gradually upon the viewer of Oliver Jackson’s entrancing paintings is their depiction of a space radically different--and missing--from our everyday, contemporary urban experience. The horizontals and verticals of city streets, the architecture of furniture and buildings, clothes and other conveniences are nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Jackson’s figures gather, gesture and cocoon themselves in a pure, natural space, a fluid realm defined by their own bodies and the basics of earth and fire. Cave-like arches of color provide shelter; wide washes of red offer warmth. Continuity between the space of human gatherings and that of the organic world is unbroken. A sense of unity results, an affirming spirit of communion between humans and the earth that permeates Jackson’s work, and makes his show here a vital, deeply moving experience.

Jackson, whose work is on view at the new Porter Randall Gallery, lives in Oakland and has taught art for the past 20 years at California State University, Sacramento. He grew up in St. Louis, where he became involved with the Black Artists Group in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, collaborating with other visual artists, musicians and poets.

“Working with musicians,” he has said, “taught me about the whole matter of time in a painting, the need to eliminate the dead spots, the parts that don’t move.”

Indeed, Jackson’s canvases and large oil pastel drawings on paper are microcosms of the animate world, breathing, dancing, sometimes quivering, sometimes sighing. Like the space they portray, the time they conjure is of an elemental, primal quality, articulated by natural cycles of activity and rest, growth and decline, communion and solitude, rather than seconds, minutes and hours.

Jackson’s “paint people,” as he calls them, are wearing only their own skins of gray, green, red or blue, and often sit in small circles of three. They seem to converse, while they point, huddle and affirm their own shared intimacy. In some works, single figures appear to sleep while among their wakeful companions. This semi-public hibernation brings with it not a trace of vulnerability, however, for Jackson’s spaces are charged with trust and ease, the glue that renders a community out of disparate individuals.

The Porter Randall show includes work from 1981 through 1990, in wood, watercolor and collage as well as paintings and drawings on paper. Only the collages falter a bit in evoking a spiritual world uncluttered by contrivances. The large (some measuring 6 feet on a side) oil pastels on paper bear the richest sweeping strokes of color, with an energy akin to both ancient cave paintings and the physical commitment of Abstract Expressionism. Jackson’s strokes are never gratuitous. They wander through the white space as necessary, in wisps, surges or fingerprinted dabs.

* Porter Randall Gallery, 5624 La Jolla Blvd., through Friday. Hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and by appointment.