Leeya Rose Jackson

Lives and works in Minneapolis, MN, USA

Artist statement

During my adolescence, I used to doodle on everything and anything to channel the images out of my head and focus on my tasks. I would doodle on my homework, quizzes, library books' margins, my legs, receipts while working as a barista, the walls of my childhood room, and even the pages of my King James Bible. My sketchbooks sat empty, but everything else was filled with my neurographic art. This eventually became my catalyst for becoming an artist, but it was initially shamed as a bad and weird habit. Much like my scattered doodling as a child, my work is equally multi-modal, noisy, and curious. I explore themes related to my own neurodivergence, blackness, femininity, shame, and joy. My interests lie in the complexity and strange beauty of Black neurodivergent girlhood, memory, and things in our shadows that others struggle to see. I am also inspired by and reference the works of Afro-futuristic writer Octavia Butler, the story quilts of Faith Ringgold, the self-portraits of Frida Kahlo, and the heroic portraiture of Kehinde Wiley. I use various mediums, such as painting, printmaking, design/typography, film, and animation, to create vibrant, lush, layered, and scattered imagery. My work includes a contrasting mix of loud, dreamy pastel colors and Musou black paint pigment to create an illusion of celestial portals and voids. These voids channel missing space, missing memory, and missing time, turning past shames into something beautiful. Scientists theorize that we as...

Artwork