July 8, 2025 • 39 mins
Have you ever considered a dramatic career change, a leap from a structured path into the wide-open world of creative expression? Our guest, Ronald Jackson, embodies this very journey. Growing up in the rural Arkansas Delta as the youngest of eleven children, Ronald's early life was steeped in a family legacy of challenging norms. After a distinguished 21-year career in the U.S. Army, a profound "aha moment" set him on an entirely new course.
Join us for an intimate conversation with Ronald as we explore his incredible transition from military life to a celebrated self-taught artist. Discover the story behind the spiritual epiphany that reshaped his path as an artist, how he "partnered with time" to develop his craft without formal training, and the deeply personal inspiration behind his striking mask paintings. If you’re looking for inspiration and action steps to redefine your life's purpose, this episode is for you.
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction to Ronald Jackson
03:15 - A Creative Childhood in the Rural South
05:00 - The Power of Play and Imagination
07:00 - An Unexpected Welcome to the Art World
10:30 - The Epiphany: A Spiritual Awakening
18:50 - The Decision to Partner with Time
24:40 - From Behind the Scenes to Best in Show
27:30 - The Story Behind the Masks
33:00 - Finding Your Artistic Voice Through Self-Discovery
36:15 - Redefining Success: From Being an Artist to Being Authentic
38:15 - Conclusion
Connect With Ronald:
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronald_jackson_artworks
Ronald’s Website: https://www.ronaldjacksonartworks.com/
Support the Show
Website: www.martineseverin.com
Follow on Instagram: @martine.severin | @thisishowwecreate_
Subscribe to the Newsletter: www.martineseverin.substack.com
This is How We Create is produced by Martine Severin. This episode was edited by Santiago Cardona and Daniel Espinosa.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, this is Ronald Jackson and this is how I create.
Welcome to This Is How We Create, a show that digs deeper into the creative life ofcontemporary artists of color.
Discover what feeds their creativity and how they found or are finding their artisticvoice.
Through these intimate and candid conversations, you'll gain insights into the lives ofcreative professionals of color that are hard to find anywhere else.
(00:27):
Welcome back to This Is How We Create.
My name is Martine Severin, your host.
Have you ever thought of
choosing a completely different career from the one that you have.
Well, you're in luck because our guest Ronald Jackson will tell us how he did just that.
But first, a little bit more about Ronald.
(00:50):
Growing up in the rural south of the Arkansas Delta, Jackson was the youngest of 11 kidsborn to a farmer and a community organizer.
His mother and father left a legacy of challenging
and reshaping the norms of the racial status quo in his surrounding home communities.
(01:10):
Jackson came from a lineage of Black landowners farming in the South.
In the mid-60s, his parents led communities in the organizations of multiple boycottsagainst the establishment of local racial injustices.
Despite suffering on onslaughts of organized threats, harassment, and retaliation,
(01:32):
Efforts eventually led to a successful lawsuit against the local school district andsubsequent U.S.
Court of Appeals decision, ruling in the favor of forcing the area school districts intofull desegregation.
Jackson studied architecture at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California, beforejoining the U.S.
(01:55):
Army.
He served 21 years plus in the Army and retired in 2014.
Now get this, midway in his military career, he began a pursuit of becoming a professionalartist with no access to art school Jackson, engage himself on a journey of
(02:17):
self-disciplines and the personal discovery to realize his goals as a self-taught artist.
The military afforded him the experience of living in places such as South Korea, Belgium,Italy.
Germany, Iraq, and Kuwait.
Ronald Jackson believes that the culture of his childhood upbringing and the adultexperience of being immersed into societies has given him a broad perspective on life and
(02:49):
on the complex challenges that we all face.
Ronald, welcome to the show.
Thank you, thank you.
It is my pleasure to chat with.
Well, Ronald, I'd love for us to start a little bit back to your early childhood.
Can you tell us about any influences to the creative arts when you were growing up?
(03:13):
Well, as you mentioned, I'm the youngest of 11 kids and to add a little more detail tothat, between me and my closest sibling, my brother, is seven years.
So there's, since the fifth grade, I was the only child in home with elderly parents.
(03:35):
so living on the farm in a small community that had drastically reduced population
during the time where I came along.
Art, being creative, was simply a way to entertain myself in a time that didn't have a lotof other things to involve yourself in.
(03:57):
I couldn't walk out of the door and go down the street and entertain myself with otherpeople just the next door or parks or things like that.
So growing up as a kid, it was always an adventure to find ways to
entertain yourself as a young person, exploring the area with some of my friends or whathave you.
(04:20):
But art really was just something that was innate in me.
And I look at it as simply like most kids are usually created.
They are usually imaginative, create stories, draw and things like that.
And I just simply didn't grow out of it.
(04:42):
is something that carry on.
So there were no external influences that led me to pursue engaging in art.
I heard about how when you were little that you would just play around and play withfrogs, play in the dirt, or even help your uncles do work around the farm and drive big
(05:06):
tractors and so on.
it sounds like you had, despite the fact that you were younger, sounds like you had a nicechildhood as well.
Yeah, actually I did.
And that's something that I think a lot of people don't realize.
When you're limited to being uh exposed to a lot of things to do, use your imagination.
(05:30):
Outside my house, there's a large shed that had massive machinery underneath the shed.
Tractors, combine, combiners, cotton pickers, and my cousin who oh
lived across the highway.
And again, not across the street, across the highway, living down roads instead ofstreets.
(05:53):
uh We would climb over these uh massive machineries and would be in a different world inour imagination, envisioning ourselves as characters, a part of comic books.
So we were able, we often created.
entertainment for ourselves.
(06:14):
And when I was by myself, I turned to drawing.
You know, as you were chatting, I was writing a note to talk to you about this laterbecause as you were describing about playing with your cousin, I was, I love neuroscience
and so I read as much as I can on neuroscience.
And I was listening to a podcast episode about how important the act of play is increativity and play ends up being something different when we're adults.
(06:47):
but it also sounds like playing and being creative sometimes means loosening up a littlebit.
And that helps us think of new ways of solving a problem or think of new ways of exploringour work.
But before I get ahead of myself, I want to bring us back to you being a 19 year oldstudent at Saddleback College in California, which is a long way away from Arkansas.
(07:16):
Can you tell me a little bit about being at college and how you came to decide to take adrawing class?
Yes.
Well, as a child, I was always recognized as having some artistic talent, not havinganyone around me to know how to guide me in that field of art or fine art.
(07:41):
I determined that my opportunity with this type of a skill set would be exploring or goinginto the field of architecture.
And while I was in college, and of course I
I left home at 17 and started college after arriving in California.
(08:03):
I was interested.
I think that's where the majority of my interest was, in some form, painting, drawing,traditional art.
But I thought it was best for me to pursue something that could earn a living.
But I chose to have take this class.
(08:25):
I've never
at this point, never taken any art classes.
And yeah, this was my first class in college.
And I thought that, okay, I'm not going to take uh a beginner's class.
I consider myself at least an intermediate oil painting class.
I was interested in painting.
(08:45):
I had never painted.
And so I'm going to try.
But one of the funny things, being a young kid,
from Arkansas coming to California to pursue education.
I would go to the art room or the building where the art class was conducted.
(09:07):
And there was often, there was these class prior to the class that I was taking.
And it was a life drawing class.
And if you know what life drawing is, students or individuals are
surrounding a model to draw a model and this model was nude.
(09:29):
And I would go in, you know, starting class and this class would always run late.
It's like they didn't want to leave.
And I thought, what in the world is going on here?
There's this nude model and everyone is around drawing this model.
(09:49):
The doors were wide open, people walking past the open door where anyone can look in.
And I thought that that was one of the strangest things.
And that was my welcome to California moment and more so the art world in general.
I thought that was an interesting dichotomy between my background and what I was exposedto in rural Arkansas.
(10:18):
coming to the big world.
So you took your painting class, but you didn't end up pursuing painting.
Instead, went to the army and was in the army for 21 plus years.
But at some point along the way, you had a revelation or an aha moment.
(10:41):
Can you tell us about that aha moment and place us as to where you were when that momentcame to you?
And tell us about the decision you decided once you had that aha moment.
Yeah, so at the time I had been in the military.
had chosen to, found it interesting that we have these plans for what we want to do withour life and certain things happen where life just leads us on a different path.
(11:10):
And I had been in the military for a number of years, probably eight to 10 years at thatpoint.
And I had determined that, to be honest,
Being in the military for me, I always felt like a fish out of water or out of place, butI did my job.
I served and was fairly well and did well in what I did.
(11:35):
But I was determined that at the 10-year mark that I was going to get out of the militaryand pursue the thing that I did in the military as a profession, as a civilian, and I was
in telecommunications.
At the time, it was around 2000, before 9-11.
I was searching for preparing myself to get out of the military and looking at the jobmarket, preparing my resume and all of that.
(12:07):
And I had an epiphany during that time.
And it's kind of a spiritual, I see it as a spiritual thing where I felt that the universewas speaking to me at that time.
Let me take you back just slightly to this story.
were in, my family and I, I had two kids at the time.
(12:29):
We were in Pennsylvania and we had just come back from Belgium.
We had been away for a number of years, like four years from the U.S.
and come back to the United States.
And one of the things that we were just enamored with on television was HG.
(12:51):
She's like, wow, this is a great network.
So my wife and I, we would look at different things on HGTV and there was a trend.
People finding old things in old doors.
And with these doors that they would find from flea markets or what have you, people weremaking beds out of these uh old doors.
(13:14):
They would make headboards.
And I just thought that was interesting.
And it was really a trend on TV.
I would see it in magazines.
And I was thinking that, you know what?
I could do that.
I could do that.
And I was like, you know what?
That's something I could do.
And I'm always of a creative person.
(13:38):
my wife and I, were living in a duplex that we were renting.
And we went upstairs.
It was an older duplex.
went upstairs in the attic where we had some of our storage.
And I looked up against the wall.
There were these probably about eight to 10 solid doors that were laying up that justheavy solid doors up there.
(14:05):
And so I called the man, Lord, and said, you have these doors in the attic.
I have an interest in using a couple of them.
If I could, I would be willing to purchase
a couple of the doors and the landlord told me, go ahead and take them.
Apparently at one time, all of the doorways in the house had doors in it and so they weretaken out.
(14:30):
I took actually three doors.
I not only made uh a bed or a headboard, I made a headboard with the footboard with thesecond door and the third door I cut and made the side railings.
And with this, it took a
process of me never, never doing any carpentry work to this level.
(14:53):
So I would draw and I would plan out how I was going to make this bed.
And during several uh instances of the process, I ran into problems of trying to figureout, okay, how am I going to do this?
And over a number of instances, I would just get the
(15:16):
The answer, you know, when I lay down at night and I start to rest or contemplate, theidea would come to me and I would jot it down.
So this happened over a time of maybe several weeks of me working on this, and I would goto work and come back home, and I would come in and sneak in the house before my wife and
(15:40):
kids realized that I've come in, and I would sneak downstairs in the basement to take alook.
at the project that I was working on.
And I realized that, man, I was amazed that this thing that started with just an ideasaying that I could do that, I start to see that idea transformed to reality.
(16:04):
And throughout the issues or problems where I ran into a problem where I really don't knowhow to do this.
And I didn't have the internet to go and
The ideas came to me and I was like, this is how I can do it.
So through the process of making that bit and it was finally put together and I would godown and look at it and I would be in awe.
(16:29):
Like, wow, I did that.
And I, at this point, I had this epiphany as if I heard the universe, God or...
my higher self or something from a spiritual place speak to me saying that if you are inawe at something that your own hands do, is it possible that you are not doing it alone?
(16:59):
So from that point, I got the specific inspiration to
reconsider what I was doing.
And what I was doing at that time was preparing myself to leave the military and pursue acivilian career.
And the direction that I got was that I could do all of those things, but when it's allsaid and done, I would have failed at becoming who I was supposed to be.
(17:31):
And over the course of three days or so,
My mind was overwhelmed with the memories of people that spoke into my life that told methat I should pursue art and the thing that people recognized I had a gift in.
And many times I ignored those people because I didn't think that I could do it.
(17:55):
But with this epiphany, I got the...
understanding or the demonstration that if I felt that I could, I would be able to do it.
And so that started me on the path to maybe I do need to pursue the thing that has alwaysbeen with me from childhood, that I continue to practice on some level.
(18:24):
And so at that point, it was no longer something that I chose to entertain myself.
I was going to pursue becoming an artist.
Did most of that happen in your head?
All of this thinking, ruminating?
Did you journal about it?
No, it wasn't something that I journaled about.
(18:47):
That wasn't a practice that I did.
Yes, it was in my head.
And I think as a creative person, a lot of things exist within my head, my imagination.
I'm exploring ideas.
And yeah, a lot of life is lived within our head, I would say.
(19:11):
What happens next?
So you had this revelation and you knew that you needed to do something.
What was the next step after you came to terms with this need to move forward?
Well, the next step was pursuing this directive that I had received with intentionality.
(19:35):
And it was no longer an effort for me to, again, just entertain myself as a lot of peopledo.
I had an objective.
And one of the things that I realized is that I wasn't at the place where I couldimmediately go to art school and pursue it in that capacity.
(19:56):
But what I realized is that, okay, I have time.
And if it takes me more time to pursue this as a self-taught artist, I would do that.
And one of the things I tell people often is that we can pretty much do anything that wehave a passion for if we're willing to partner with time.
(20:24):
Time will help us.
achieve many of our goals.
And I feel if my passion was at any other in any other area or field, if I had given theamount of time that I had given to preparing myself to be an artist, I could have done
(20:45):
other things.
another thing to add is that from that point, 2000, it was
Yeah, it took me 10 years before I ever publicly showed my work.
So 10 years of working behind the scene, practicing, I realized that I had some talent,but I was raw.
(21:08):
There's a lot of development, and so I applied myself to magazines, reading magazines,observing a lot of other artists.
And so those were some of the things that I pursued during that stage.
So from then, did you happen to take classes?
Perhaps, did you happen to take maybe a painting class or a drawing class locally?
(21:34):
What other things did you do to bridge that chasm from the person you were then to who youare now?
Well, what happened was after I basically chose to stay in the military and continued mymilitary career, which was another 10 years, and being in the military, that presented a
(22:02):
challenge for pursuing art in a traditional manner.
There was rigorous demands on me being in the army from deployments, from
from assignments and things like that.
So it was up to me to just apply myself in my personal time.
(22:23):
I practiced often and just worked on my craft.
And that was the best thing that I could do and expose myself to other artists.
And that is really the method or the actions that I was able to take.
(22:43):
It's just personal applications.
I really like the idea of partnering with time and just using time as a way to achievingyour goals.
mean, the way that you also say it, Ronald, it sounds really easy and we can'tunderestimate how much work went into being able to develop as an artist.
(23:09):
Let's fast forward five years to when you first
decided that you were going to apply yourself, you were going to partner with Time to seewhat you were made of, to explore your talent.
And granted, this is another probably like four years before you even exhibited your work.
(23:30):
Can you tell me what were some of the things that you were discovering about yourself asan artist and what you were discovering about your artistic voice at that point?
I would add that the most of my discovery about myself as being an artist was after Istarted exhibiting.
(23:51):
But before that time, what I realized is by purposely applying yourself, your skill leveland ability could drastically improve.
And that was something that would excite me.
inspire me to continue to pursue.
(24:12):
I had an idea that I won't be able to achieve what I wanted to achieve while I was in themilitary.
So that was giving me a timeline to say that I have a certain amount of time and after mytime in the military, I want to be prepared to cross over into another career as if I was
(24:38):
graduating art school or what have you.
Tell us about your first exhibition then.
How did that come about?
How did you go about figuring out the body of work that you would create for displayingyour work?
Well, my first exhibition was an invitational, a local, small local gallery that invitedartists to contribute works to a show that curated.
(25:05):
This was 2010, and with the show, I submitted three pieces to the work, and it was anaccomplishment for the works to be accepted into the show.
Secondly, it was also an accomplishment for my
one of my works to get selected as best of the show.
(25:28):
So being the first time submitting my work to a gallery show and then receiving thatrecognition was something that is what I was working towards.
And I think that any time before that, during that nine, 10 years where I was workingbehind the scenes, I'm really happy and glad
(25:52):
that social media or Instagram wasn't prevalent because I would have been tempted to pushwork out there before I was ready.
uh But a year after that, because of that show, I got an opportunity at another gallery toput on a solo exhibition.
And that was really my coming into the art community where I was being introduced as anart artist.
(26:21):
And it was a very successful show.
And that was the start in 2011, that first solo show that I had.
How did you go about making those relationships?
Well, it basically started on a smaller scale.
Many cities have small art communities and galleries where people make art.
(26:47):
And there are a number of galleries that support the local community.
That happens and occurs all around the country.
And I was in a town that had a number of
of small galleries, first Friday events.
I would go to galleries and talk to some of the artists there and sit and chat with them.
(27:09):
They discover that I'm an artist and that's how the relationships began.
And I've had two solo shows with that initial small gallery before I became represented bythe gallery that I've worked with over the past several.
several years out of Baltimore.
(27:31):
So you are known mainly for your mask work.
And in terms of what we expect when we see figurative work, we expect to see essentially aperson unveiled.
And you have decided not to do that, at least for some of the work that you do.
And in past interviews, you talk about how your mask work suggests that we are all meantto be viewed with humanity.
(27:59):
Can you tell me
how you first came up with the idea to include masks in your work.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's something that wasn't fully intentional.
It just happened because I really prefer narrative works that more easily tells a story orinsinuates a story.
(28:26):
up to that point, though I've done a lot of portrait type of works, it wasn't somethingthat I wanted to pursue as portraits.
And I...
was asked to do a solo show for my gallery and I accepted, but I only had four months toprepare the works for the show.
(28:49):
And at the time I was working on pieces that again, gave more of a narrative with multiplefigures and a scene of figures in space.
And I realized that I couldn't do that for the show.
And I resulted in
just doing faces.
(29:09):
And with the requirement to place images on the walls of the gallery, said, I'm going todo large faces.
And I started doing these large paintings of these faces.
And after about two or three of them, I was like, man, I'm just not into this.
(29:31):
This is not what I want to do.
And I decided to try a mask.
over the face.
And I wanted to create this image that contrasted a black male figure with these floralmasks.
So that started to interest me and changed the experience for me creating, making thework.
(30:00):
So I really got into that and I thought that there was something there.
So
With my first solo show with my gallery, I introduce all of these uh mask portraits andthey resonated with people.
And one of the things that I realized is that even though a portrait is typically aboutidentity, more so than it's very limited in portraying a narrative, I found that including
(30:32):
a mask,
to the portrait or the person, it does really well in insinuating that there is a storythere for you to discover or uncover.
And one of the things that I found is that people would look at the works and they wouldleave the works looking for someone to give them a story.
(31:00):
just as my mask concealed
One's identity or just as masks projects identities as a Batman or a Spider-Man mask wouldproject a certain identity, they also conceal identities as well.
So I found that the mask was very useful in a different way of suggesting or bringingnarratives.
(31:27):
Ronald, could you tell me the story of standing in front of the first painting, the onethat you described, you saw a black gentleman and you decided that you were going to
create a mask of flowers on that gentleman's face.
Can you please lead me back to where you were standing when you were looking at thatpainting and what you were feeling and why the idea of flowers?
(31:55):
felt like the right mask for that particular person or that character.
Well, I think during that time, I was dealing with the idea of presenting a black malefigure as someone that could potentially be non-threatening or is non-threatening.
(32:16):
And placing flowers uh with a person, however, whether it's a mask or in the arms or inthe hand, that has a way of softening person for people that are
observing that individual.
I've mentioned with people that the idea of flowers, no matter who the person is, thehardest person that you could think of, you've never heard of a person respond, who in the
(32:50):
world brought these blank, blank, blankety blank flowers and put them on my...
Flowers are not...
given that type of attitude, they're usually receptive and they soften anyone that isassociated with them.
So I was treating a male, a black male face and figure as a way to engage or observe aperson and have immediate positive, potentially positive responses from that imagery.
(33:28):
Thank you so much.
So as we wrap up, I would love to talk a little bit about your artistic voice.
Can you tell me about, you know, when I first asked you about how you started thinkingabout your artistic voice, you said you didn't really settle into it until you started
(33:48):
exhibiting your work and you are continuing to grow as an artist.
Can you tell me a little bit about
how you're settling into your voice and how you might want it to shift in the future.
Yes, one of the things that early with me recognizing my voice and the influences behindmy work was I would often paint paintings and spent a lot of time just observing them
(34:18):
myself, just looking at them.
And I realized that that for me became a process of self-discovery.
I was learning a lot about my personal values by
looking at the work that I repeatedly returned to within my work.
Why would I paint imagery using a certain palette?
(34:44):
Or when I addressed or painted figures, why would I often put them in a time of the past?
And I realized that my upbringing had a lot to do with that and dealing with the
learning about the stories that came from my family's history and other stories that areoften untold.
(35:12):
And maybe it's because many people don't talk or feel that their stories are worth anaudience listening to them, but I feel that there are so many, so many accounts and
stories that are
not only inspiring, but are also educational and can motivate and instill a sense of valueand worth to people by hearing some stories of people that may seem insignificant to
(35:47):
society at large.
So that is really the main thing behind my motivation for art is the desire to bringstories.
and insinuate stories or to hear what other people feel from the works that I create.
(36:08):
That's beautiful.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
So Ronald, how has your idea of success changed since you started calling yourself anartist?
That's a good question.
One of the things back when I was reading articles, I would subscribe to several artpublications, art news, American Art Collector, and I was trying to discover what it was
(36:38):
to be an artist and how to become an artist and what it meant.
And one of the things that a lot of people do, I think, is create a persona, whetheryou're a visual artist or any kind of artist.
And not to say that that's a bad thing, you know, it works for a lot of people, but thething that I've discovered is to not so much try to be an artist.
(37:03):
And lately I've just been trying to be more my authentic self and discover who I aminstead of trying to be an artist.
And who I am is a person that have ideas.
I love uh imagination.
I'm a creative and if I can be confident in who I am, I really think that there's a lotfor me to still learn about myself.
(37:31):
And that's the thing that I am learning to explore more and more.
We are all much deeper than we portray and than we know ourselves to be.
There's much more inside of us that we can draw from.
we can present and give and inspire others.
So if we can look inside ourselves, I think there's a wealth of treasure and things thatwe can draw from to explore this life.
(38:01):
So as an artist, as a person, I am trying to discover who I am more and more every day.
was really beautiful.
Ronald, thank you so much for joining us.
This has been an absolute pleasure.
I really love chatting with you.
It's been my pleasure and I appreciate the opportunity.
(38:26):
There I have a quick favor to ask you before you go.
If you're loving the show, would you mind taking a quick second to leave us a five starreview on your favorite go to podcast app?
Here's the thing.
Those reviews are like magic fairy dust.
They help other creators of color discover our show and tap into their own artisticsuperpowers.
(38:51):
While you're at it, why not subscribe to our subs pack?
newsletter Creative Matters.
Creative Matters is like a weekly dose of inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.
You can find the link to subscribe in the show notes.
Alright, that's all that I have for you today.
(39:12):
I can't wait to see you on the next episode.
Bye.
Hi, this is Ronald Jackson and this is how I create.
Welcome to This Is How We Create, a show that digs deeper into the creative life ofcontemporary artists of color.
Discover what feeds their creativity and how they found or are finding their artisticvoice.
Through these intimate and candid conversations, you'll gain insights into the lives ofcreative professionals of color that are hard to find anywhere else.
(00:27):
Welcome back to This Is How We Create.
My name is Martine Severin, your host.
Have you ever thought of
choosing a completely different career from the one that you have.
Well, you're in luck because our guest Ronald Jackson will tell us how he did just that.
But first, a little bit more about Ronald.
(00:50):
Growing up in the rural south of the Arkansas Delta, Jackson was the youngest of 11 kidsborn to a farmer and a community organizer.
His mother and father left a legacy of challenging
and reshaping the norms of the racial status quo in his surrounding home communities.
(01:10):
Jackson came from a lineage of Black landowners farming in the South.
In the mid-60s, his parents led communities in the organizations of multiple boycottsagainst the establishment of local racial injustices.
Despite suffering on onslaughts of organized threats, harassment, and retaliation,
(01:32):
Efforts eventually led to a successful lawsuit against the local school district andsubsequent U.S.
Court of Appeals decision, ruling in the favor of forcing the area school districts intofull desegregation.
Jackson studied architecture at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California, beforejoining the U.S.
(01:55):
Army.
He served 21 years plus in the Army and retired in 2014.
Now get this, midway in his military career, he began a pursuit of becoming a professionalartist with no access to art school Jackson, engage himself on a journey of
(02:17):
self-disciplines and the personal discovery to realize his goals as a self-taught artist.
The military afforded him the experience of living in places such as South Korea, Belgium,Italy.
Germany, Iraq, and Kuwait.
Ronald Jackson believes that the culture of his childhood upbringing and the adultexperience of being immersed into societies has given him a broad perspective on life and
(02:49):
on the complex challenges that we all face.
Ronald, welcome to the show.
Thank you, thank you.
It is my pleasure to chat with.
Well, Ronald, I'd love for us to start a little bit back to your early childhood.
Can you tell us about any influences to the creative arts when you were growing up?
(03:13):
Well, as you mentioned, I'm the youngest of 11 kids and to add a little more detail tothat, between me and my closest sibling, my brother, is seven years.
So there's, since the fifth grade, I was the only child in home with elderly parents.
(03:35):
so living on the farm in a small community that had drastically reduced population
during the time where I came along.
Art, being creative, was simply a way to entertain myself in a time that didn't have a lotof other things to involve yourself in.
(03:57):
I couldn't walk out of the door and go down the street and entertain myself with otherpeople just the next door or parks or things like that.
So growing up as a kid, it was always an adventure to find ways to
entertain yourself as a young person, exploring the area with some of my friends or whathave you.
(04:20):
But art really was just something that was innate in me.
And I look at it as simply like most kids are usually created.
They are usually imaginative, create stories, draw and things like that.
And I just simply didn't grow out of it.
(04:42):
is something that carry on.
So there were no external influences that led me to pursue engaging in art.
I heard about how when you were little that you would just play around and play withfrogs, play in the dirt, or even help your uncles do work around the farm and drive big
(05:06):
tractors and so on.
it sounds like you had, despite the fact that you were younger, sounds like you had a nicechildhood as well.
Yeah, actually I did.
And that's something that I think a lot of people don't realize.
When you're limited to being uh exposed to a lot of things to do, use your imagination.
(05:30):
Outside my house, there's a large shed that had massive machinery underneath the shed.
Tractors, combine, combiners, cotton pickers, and my cousin who oh
lived across the highway.
And again, not across the street, across the highway, living down roads instead ofstreets.
(05:53):
uh We would climb over these uh massive machineries and would be in a different world inour imagination, envisioning ourselves as characters, a part of comic books.
So we were able, we often created.
entertainment for ourselves.
(06:14):
And when I was by myself, I turned to drawing.
You know, as you were chatting, I was writing a note to talk to you about this laterbecause as you were describing about playing with your cousin, I was, I love neuroscience
and so I read as much as I can on neuroscience.
And I was listening to a podcast episode about how important the act of play is increativity and play ends up being something different when we're adults.
(06:47):
but it also sounds like playing and being creative sometimes means loosening up a littlebit.
And that helps us think of new ways of solving a problem or think of new ways of exploringour work.
But before I get ahead of myself, I want to bring us back to you being a 19 year oldstudent at Saddleback College in California, which is a long way away from Arkansas.
(07:16):
Can you tell me a little bit about being at college and how you came to decide to take adrawing class?
Yes.
Well, as a child, I was always recognized as having some artistic talent, not havinganyone around me to know how to guide me in that field of art or fine art.
(07:41):
I determined that my opportunity with this type of a skill set would be exploring or goinginto the field of architecture.
And while I was in college, and of course I
I left home at 17 and started college after arriving in California.
(08:03):
I was interested.
I think that's where the majority of my interest was, in some form, painting, drawing,traditional art.
But I thought it was best for me to pursue something that could earn a living.
But I chose to have take this class.
(08:25):
I've never
at this point, never taken any art classes.
And yeah, this was my first class in college.
And I thought that, okay, I'm not going to take uh a beginner's class.
I consider myself at least an intermediate oil painting class.
I was interested in painting.
(08:45):
I had never painted.
And so I'm going to try.
But one of the funny things, being a young kid,
from Arkansas coming to California to pursue education.
I would go to the art room or the building where the art class was conducted.
(09:07):
And there was often, there was these class prior to the class that I was taking.
And it was a life drawing class.
And if you know what life drawing is, students or individuals are
surrounding a model to draw a model and this model was nude.
(09:29):
And I would go in, you know, starting class and this class would always run late.
It's like they didn't want to leave.
And I thought, what in the world is going on here?
There's this nude model and everyone is around drawing this model.
(09:49):
The doors were wide open, people walking past the open door where anyone can look in.
And I thought that that was one of the strangest things.
And that was my welcome to California moment and more so the art world in general.
I thought that was an interesting dichotomy between my background and what I was exposedto in rural Arkansas.
(10:18):
coming to the big world.
So you took your painting class, but you didn't end up pursuing painting.
Instead, went to the army and was in the army for 21 plus years.
But at some point along the way, you had a revelation or an aha moment.
(10:41):
Can you tell us about that aha moment and place us as to where you were when that momentcame to you?
And tell us about the decision you decided once you had that aha moment.
Yeah, so at the time I had been in the military.
had chosen to, found it interesting that we have these plans for what we want to do withour life and certain things happen where life just leads us on a different path.
(11:10):
And I had been in the military for a number of years, probably eight to 10 years at thatpoint.
And I had determined that, to be honest,
Being in the military for me, I always felt like a fish out of water or out of place, butI did my job.
I served and was fairly well and did well in what I did.
(11:35):
But I was determined that at the 10-year mark that I was going to get out of the militaryand pursue the thing that I did in the military as a profession, as a civilian, and I was
in telecommunications.
At the time, it was around 2000, before 9-11.
I was searching for preparing myself to get out of the military and looking at the jobmarket, preparing my resume and all of that.
(12:07):
And I had an epiphany during that time.
And it's kind of a spiritual, I see it as a spiritual thing where I felt that the universewas speaking to me at that time.
Let me take you back just slightly to this story.
were in, my family and I, I had two kids at the time.
(12:29):
We were in Pennsylvania and we had just come back from Belgium.
We had been away for a number of years, like four years from the U.S.
and come back to the United States.
And one of the things that we were just enamored with on television was HG.
(12:51):
She's like, wow, this is a great network.
So my wife and I, we would look at different things on HGTV and there was a trend.
People finding old things in old doors.
And with these doors that they would find from flea markets or what have you, people weremaking beds out of these uh old doors.
(13:14):
They would make headboards.
And I just thought that was interesting.
And it was really a trend on TV.
I would see it in magazines.
And I was thinking that, you know what?
I could do that.
I could do that.
And I was like, you know what?
That's something I could do.
And I'm always of a creative person.
(13:38):
my wife and I, were living in a duplex that we were renting.
And we went upstairs.
It was an older duplex.
went upstairs in the attic where we had some of our storage.
And I looked up against the wall.
There were these probably about eight to 10 solid doors that were laying up that justheavy solid doors up there.
(14:05):
And so I called the man, Lord, and said, you have these doors in the attic.
I have an interest in using a couple of them.
If I could, I would be willing to purchase
a couple of the doors and the landlord told me, go ahead and take them.
Apparently at one time, all of the doorways in the house had doors in it and so they weretaken out.
(14:30):
I took actually three doors.
I not only made uh a bed or a headboard, I made a headboard with the footboard with thesecond door and the third door I cut and made the side railings.
And with this, it took a
process of me never, never doing any carpentry work to this level.
(14:53):
So I would draw and I would plan out how I was going to make this bed.
And during several uh instances of the process, I ran into problems of trying to figureout, okay, how am I going to do this?
And over a number of instances, I would just get the
(15:16):
The answer, you know, when I lay down at night and I start to rest or contemplate, theidea would come to me and I would jot it down.
So this happened over a time of maybe several weeks of me working on this, and I would goto work and come back home, and I would come in and sneak in the house before my wife and
(15:40):
kids realized that I've come in, and I would sneak downstairs in the basement to take alook.
at the project that I was working on.
And I realized that, man, I was amazed that this thing that started with just an ideasaying that I could do that, I start to see that idea transformed to reality.
(16:04):
And throughout the issues or problems where I ran into a problem where I really don't knowhow to do this.
And I didn't have the internet to go and
The ideas came to me and I was like, this is how I can do it.
So through the process of making that bit and it was finally put together and I would godown and look at it and I would be in awe.
(16:29):
Like, wow, I did that.
And I, at this point, I had this epiphany as if I heard the universe, God or...
my higher self or something from a spiritual place speak to me saying that if you are inawe at something that your own hands do, is it possible that you are not doing it alone?
(16:59):
So from that point, I got the specific inspiration to
reconsider what I was doing.
And what I was doing at that time was preparing myself to leave the military and pursue acivilian career.
And the direction that I got was that I could do all of those things, but when it's allsaid and done, I would have failed at becoming who I was supposed to be.
(17:31):
And over the course of three days or so,
My mind was overwhelmed with the memories of people that spoke into my life that told methat I should pursue art and the thing that people recognized I had a gift in.
And many times I ignored those people because I didn't think that I could do it.
(17:55):
But with this epiphany, I got the...
understanding or the demonstration that if I felt that I could, I would be able to do it.
And so that started me on the path to maybe I do need to pursue the thing that has alwaysbeen with me from childhood, that I continue to practice on some level.
(18:24):
And so at that point, it was no longer something that I chose to entertain myself.
I was going to pursue becoming an artist.
Did most of that happen in your head?
All of this thinking, ruminating?
Did you journal about it?
No, it wasn't something that I journaled about.
(18:47):
That wasn't a practice that I did.
Yes, it was in my head.
And I think as a creative person, a lot of things exist within my head, my imagination.
I'm exploring ideas.
And yeah, a lot of life is lived within our head, I would say.
(19:11):
What happens next?
So you had this revelation and you knew that you needed to do something.
What was the next step after you came to terms with this need to move forward?
Well, the next step was pursuing this directive that I had received with intentionality.
(19:35):
And it was no longer an effort for me to, again, just entertain myself as a lot of peopledo.
I had an objective.
And one of the things that I realized is that I wasn't at the place where I couldimmediately go to art school and pursue it in that capacity.
(19:56):
But what I realized is that, okay, I have time.
And if it takes me more time to pursue this as a self-taught artist, I would do that.
And one of the things I tell people often is that we can pretty much do anything that wehave a passion for if we're willing to partner with time.
(20:24):
Time will help us.
achieve many of our goals.
And I feel if my passion was at any other in any other area or field, if I had given theamount of time that I had given to preparing myself to be an artist, I could have done
(20:45):
other things.
another thing to add is that from that point, 2000, it was
Yeah, it took me 10 years before I ever publicly showed my work.
So 10 years of working behind the scene, practicing, I realized that I had some talent,but I was raw.
(21:08):
There's a lot of development, and so I applied myself to magazines, reading magazines,observing a lot of other artists.
And so those were some of the things that I pursued during that stage.
So from then, did you happen to take classes?
Perhaps, did you happen to take maybe a painting class or a drawing class locally?
(21:34):
What other things did you do to bridge that chasm from the person you were then to who youare now?
Well, what happened was after I basically chose to stay in the military and continued mymilitary career, which was another 10 years, and being in the military, that presented a
(22:02):
challenge for pursuing art in a traditional manner.
There was rigorous demands on me being in the army from deployments, from
from assignments and things like that.
So it was up to me to just apply myself in my personal time.
(22:23):
I practiced often and just worked on my craft.
And that was the best thing that I could do and expose myself to other artists.
And that is really the method or the actions that I was able to take.
(22:43):
It's just personal applications.
I really like the idea of partnering with time and just using time as a way to achievingyour goals.
mean, the way that you also say it, Ronald, it sounds really easy and we can'tunderestimate how much work went into being able to develop as an artist.
(23:09):
Let's fast forward five years to when you first
decided that you were going to apply yourself, you were going to partner with Time to seewhat you were made of, to explore your talent.
And granted, this is another probably like four years before you even exhibited your work.
(23:30):
Can you tell me what were some of the things that you were discovering about yourself asan artist and what you were discovering about your artistic voice at that point?
I would add that the most of my discovery about myself as being an artist was after Istarted exhibiting.
(23:51):
But before that time, what I realized is by purposely applying yourself, your skill leveland ability could drastically improve.
And that was something that would excite me.
inspire me to continue to pursue.
(24:12):
I had an idea that I won't be able to achieve what I wanted to achieve while I was in themilitary.
So that was giving me a timeline to say that I have a certain amount of time and after mytime in the military, I want to be prepared to cross over into another career as if I was
(24:38):
graduating art school or what have you.
Tell us about your first exhibition then.
How did that come about?
How did you go about figuring out the body of work that you would create for displayingyour work?
Well, my first exhibition was an invitational, a local, small local gallery that invitedartists to contribute works to a show that curated.
(25:05):
This was 2010, and with the show, I submitted three pieces to the work, and it was anaccomplishment for the works to be accepted into the show.
Secondly, it was also an accomplishment for my
one of my works to get selected as best of the show.
(25:28):
So being the first time submitting my work to a gallery show and then receiving thatrecognition was something that is what I was working towards.
And I think that any time before that, during that nine, 10 years where I was workingbehind the scenes, I'm really happy and glad
(25:52):
that social media or Instagram wasn't prevalent because I would have been tempted to pushwork out there before I was ready.
uh But a year after that, because of that show, I got an opportunity at another gallery toput on a solo exhibition.
And that was really my coming into the art community where I was being introduced as anart artist.
(26:21):
And it was a very successful show.
And that was the start in 2011, that first solo show that I had.
How did you go about making those relationships?
Well, it basically started on a smaller scale.
Many cities have small art communities and galleries where people make art.
(26:47):
And there are a number of galleries that support the local community.
That happens and occurs all around the country.
And I was in a town that had a number of
of small galleries, first Friday events.
I would go to galleries and talk to some of the artists there and sit and chat with them.
(27:09):
They discover that I'm an artist and that's how the relationships began.
And I've had two solo shows with that initial small gallery before I became represented bythe gallery that I've worked with over the past several.
several years out of Baltimore.
(27:31):
So you are known mainly for your mask work.
And in terms of what we expect when we see figurative work, we expect to see essentially aperson unveiled.
And you have decided not to do that, at least for some of the work that you do.
And in past interviews, you talk about how your mask work suggests that we are all meantto be viewed with humanity.
(27:59):
Can you tell me
how you first came up with the idea to include masks in your work.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's something that wasn't fully intentional.
It just happened because I really prefer narrative works that more easily tells a story orinsinuates a story.
(28:26):
up to that point, though I've done a lot of portrait type of works, it wasn't somethingthat I wanted to pursue as portraits.
And I...
was asked to do a solo show for my gallery and I accepted, but I only had four months toprepare the works for the show.
(28:49):
And at the time I was working on pieces that again, gave more of a narrative with multiplefigures and a scene of figures in space.
And I realized that I couldn't do that for the show.
And I resulted in
just doing faces.
(29:09):
And with the requirement to place images on the walls of the gallery, said, I'm going todo large faces.
And I started doing these large paintings of these faces.
And after about two or three of them, I was like, man, I'm just not into this.
(29:31):
This is not what I want to do.
And I decided to try a mask.
over the face.
And I wanted to create this image that contrasted a black male figure with these floralmasks.
So that started to interest me and changed the experience for me creating, making thework.
(30:00):
So I really got into that and I thought that there was something there.
So
With my first solo show with my gallery, I introduce all of these uh mask portraits andthey resonated with people.
And one of the things that I realized is that even though a portrait is typically aboutidentity, more so than it's very limited in portraying a narrative, I found that including
(30:32):
a mask,
to the portrait or the person, it does really well in insinuating that there is a storythere for you to discover or uncover.
And one of the things that I found is that people would look at the works and they wouldleave the works looking for someone to give them a story.
(31:00):
just as my mask concealed
One's identity or just as masks projects identities as a Batman or a Spider-Man mask wouldproject a certain identity, they also conceal identities as well.
So I found that the mask was very useful in a different way of suggesting or bringingnarratives.
(31:27):
Ronald, could you tell me the story of standing in front of the first painting, the onethat you described, you saw a black gentleman and you decided that you were going to
create a mask of flowers on that gentleman's face.
Can you please lead me back to where you were standing when you were looking at thatpainting and what you were feeling and why the idea of flowers?
(31:55):
felt like the right mask for that particular person or that character.
Well, I think during that time, I was dealing with the idea of presenting a black malefigure as someone that could potentially be non-threatening or is non-threatening.
(32:16):
And placing flowers uh with a person, however, whether it's a mask or in the arms or inthe hand, that has a way of softening person for people that are
observing that individual.
I've mentioned with people that the idea of flowers, no matter who the person is, thehardest person that you could think of, you've never heard of a person respond, who in the
(32:50):
world brought these blank, blank, blankety blank flowers and put them on my...
Flowers are not...
given that type of attitude, they're usually receptive and they soften anyone that isassociated with them.
So I was treating a male, a black male face and figure as a way to engage or observe aperson and have immediate positive, potentially positive responses from that imagery.
(33:28):
Thank you so much.
So as we wrap up, I would love to talk a little bit about your artistic voice.
Can you tell me about, you know, when I first asked you about how you started thinkingabout your artistic voice, you said you didn't really settle into it until you started
(33:48):
exhibiting your work and you are continuing to grow as an artist.
Can you tell me a little bit about
how you're settling into your voice and how you might want it to shift in the future.
Yes, one of the things that early with me recognizing my voice and the influences behindmy work was I would often paint paintings and spent a lot of time just observing them
(34:18):
myself, just looking at them.
And I realized that that for me became a process of self-discovery.
I was learning a lot about my personal values by
looking at the work that I repeatedly returned to within my work.
Why would I paint imagery using a certain palette?
(34:44):
Or when I addressed or painted figures, why would I often put them in a time of the past?
And I realized that my upbringing had a lot to do with that and dealing with the
learning about the stories that came from my family's history and other stories that areoften untold.
(35:12):
And maybe it's because many people don't talk or feel that their stories are worth anaudience listening to them, but I feel that there are so many, so many accounts and
stories that are
not only inspiring, but are also educational and can motivate and instill a sense of valueand worth to people by hearing some stories of people that may seem insignificant to
(35:47):
society at large.
So that is really the main thing behind my motivation for art is the desire to bringstories.
and insinuate stories or to hear what other people feel from the works that I create.
(36:08):
That's beautiful.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
So Ronald, how has your idea of success changed since you started calling yourself anartist?
That's a good question.
One of the things back when I was reading articles, I would subscribe to several artpublications, art news, American Art Collector, and I was trying to discover what it was
(36:38):
to be an artist and how to become an artist and what it meant.
And one of the things that a lot of people do, I think, is create a persona, whetheryou're a visual artist or any kind of artist.
And not to say that that's a bad thing, you know, it works for a lot of people, but thething that I've discovered is to not so much try to be an artist.
(37:03):
And lately I've just been trying to be more my authentic self and discover who I aminstead of trying to be an artist.
And who I am is a person that have ideas.
I love uh imagination.
I'm a creative and if I can be confident in who I am, I really think that there's a lotfor me to still learn about myself.
(37:31):
And that's the thing that I am learning to explore more and more.
We are all much deeper than we portray and than we know ourselves to be.
There's much more inside of us that we can draw from.
we can present and give and inspire others.
So if we can look inside ourselves, I think there's a wealth of treasure and things thatwe can draw from to explore this life.
(38:01):
So as an artist, as a person, I am trying to discover who I am more and more every day.
was really beautiful.
Ronald, thank you so much for joining us.
This has been an absolute pleasure.
I really love chatting with you.
It's been my pleasure and I appreciate the opportunity.
(38:26):
There I have a quick favor to ask you before you go.
If you're loving the show, would you mind taking a quick second to leave us a five starreview on your favorite go to podcast app?
Here's the thing.
Those reviews are like magic fairy dust.
They help other creators of color discover our show and tap into their own artisticsuperpowers.
(38:51):
While you're at it, why not subscribe to our subs pack?
newsletter Creative Matters.
Creative Matters is like a weekly dose of inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.
You can find the link to subscribe in the show notes.
Alright, that's all that I have for you today.
(39:12):
I can't wait to see you on the next episode.
Bye.
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