Martine Jackson

B. 1979

Martine Jackson is a ceramic artist based in Cape Town whose pieces are defined by the versatility of their surfaces and their organic, billowing forms. Her works are pieces of memoir, drawing from her encounters with the natural world, emerging from a bedrock of lived experience. She approaches each piece primarily as a sculptural medium whose dynamic tension comes from the interplay of three-dimensional form and two-dimensional surface.

Jackson graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2000 and previously taught at the Barbara Jackson School of Ceramics, founded in 1978 by her mother — one of South Africa’s pioneering (yet undocumented) female ceramic artists. In recent years, Martine Jackson has further uncovered a deep, personal expression in her work. Her pieces are gentle iterations of ancient mountainscapes; they speak to the traces on the earth’s surface, left behind by the passage of time, they speak to the human experience, for to live is to be marked.

Featured Artworks

Carved Dreams
Desert Sanctum
Desertscape
Eternal Terrain
Inner Turbulence
Maternal Bond
Rivers in the Sky
Togetherness

“I identify with the materiality of clay – both being fragile and strong. This contrast is shown in the sculptures. The grit of the surfaces, the strength in their scale, alongside the softness and the contours and curves. The feminine undulations, the flow of form. It’s an old language learnt as a young child, and has been intuitively used to soothe and heal myself. It connects me to my maternal love source and heals that connection."

Martine Jackson

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