Artist Profile - Leon Jackman

By Colin Serjent

In constructing his art, painter and installation artist Leon Jackman said he looks for unusual forms, textures, patterns and colours to extract and use in an abstract expressionist way.
"I am always experimenting and trying to use a wide range of materials and processes to explore form."
Leon - who is due to complete an HND in Fine Art from Liverpool Community College and has a work space at Arena studios - believes that his creative working "continually allows me to become stronger and gives me more confidence."
In the summer he will be involved with a newly formed artist group called Decimus, which is comprised of students from the college. Their first exhibition will be at the Kif Gallery in Parr Street in Liverpool during June.
Leon is very interested in exploring different forms of communication.
He has kept a record of all the text messages he has received on his mobile phone over the past two and a half years.
Why has he done this?
"People do not tend to write letters to each other any more, and I find text messaging to be a very personal form of communication," he explained.
"I felt lonely and isolated when I returned to Liverpool after spending two years in Ibiza working as a DJ."
He is also learning to read and write Braille. Last year he staged an installation with Liverpool-based artist collective Red Dot Exhibitions based around this method of communication.
Visitors to art galleries are normally asked not to handle art objects on display, but Leon actively encourages them to touch his work.
The Braille in question was a love poem.
"Generally, most of my ideas are developed from everyday surroundings and pressures that act upon life itself."
Earlier in his life he suffered the pressures of drink and drug dependency, and spent six months in rehabilitation trying to combat these twin addictions.
"In regard to my installation work," explained Leon, "I tend to look for everyday materials and objects that can be broken down and stripped of their original identity. I then re-configure them in order that they take on a new meaning.
"With my paintings I gain most of my inspiration from living and/or decaying matter, looking for beauty in things we tend to take for granted."