William Hanhausen

A REVELATION OF NEO-ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

Imaginary art spirits in photographic compositions of refracted color and light

The art of George O. Jackson de Llano

One of the most innovative creators of truly abstract photography, George O. Jackson de Llano

is not only a prominent figure in modern Mexican photography, having photographed the important festivals of Mexico’s 63 indigenous cultures as they existed in the final decade of the millennium, a project that earned him a seven-month venue at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and another six at the fabled Museo Nacional de Antropología. His photograph of a group of “Fariseos”, standing on a rock at the 1991 Semana Santa celebration in Pinotepa de don Luis, Oaxaca, is on the cover of the recently published 5 kilo tome, Las Culturas Indigenas de Mexico, Atlas Nacional de Etnografía, placing him among the greatest Latino master photographers in the genre. His latest work is his most daring and rarest, representing the pinnacle of his maturity as an artist.

Simply put, since then he has been engaged in a continuing decade and a half involvement photographing refracted color and light manifest in anthropomorphic compositions that he finds in a milieu created in an east window for the occasions, consisting of wrinkled up, soft plastic water bottles - some colored by Ukrainian Easter egg dyes, all in proximity to a myriad of crystals of all shapes and sizes along with a few fancy tequila bottles and other sparkly things that vary with whim and whimsy. He then parabolically reflects full light of the sun back into the crystal mass, creating a powerful light machine that causes the bottles to glow borrowing color from one another amongst which he recognizes the personages that he finds and portrays, hiding in the light.

“I am exploring imagination through refracted color and light.

With the sun as my source, I transform light and translucent forms into a range of abstract expressions and emotions.” G.O.J.deLL

This project started more than a decade ago with the sunrise striking a pure de-wired crystal chandelier in an east window, that showered his mornings with dazzling color and light, resulting from the refraction that occurred through the sun’s prismatic interaction with the crystals as it made its way across the morning sky. He started photographing the chandelier with a telephoto lens, attempting to capture and distill the pure colors and forms that broke out of the morning sun.

He has convinced himself that the forms are 20th C art spirits that taught him how to SEE, come to participate in his exploration of them in appreciation of his knowing they exist and given their uniqueness to photography, actually herald a new genre in the creation of abstract expression.

Each image is photographed 12 times bracketed by thirds to yield the near perfect “one”, which after being identified rejoins its brethren to be rotated clockwise causing them to lie on their sides then mirroring them by flipping them alternately - spontaneously revealing what he calls Thaumaturgy because of the magical apparitions that emerge from his recognized spirits, making them an exciting new form of abstract expression, where the recognized 20th century color and light spirits actually determine what you see by expressing themselves.

It is an extraordinary, unique collection of compositions of refracted color and light by a lucid imagination unique to photography suggesting a metaphysical portal through which the spirit world could look back at us.

An imagination taking the time to peruse them will find many things hiding in the light, while discovering a new way of creating abstract expression

 Jackson was influenced by certain important 20th century artists. Mexican surrealist Alejandro Colunga and the late Houston artist Bob Bilyeu Camblin, along with Tamayo, Siqueiros, Rivera, Matisse, Picasso, Miró, Chagall, de Kooning, Jenkins, Klein, Kline, Rothko, Turrell, Kapoor, Bell, Price, Basquiat, Staley, to name a few, that he has known and studied for five decades that have robustly imbued him.

“My fascination with color and light began at an early age because of a creative grandfather, who would hide assorted lifesaver candies for me to discover in the most unlikely places. I see them in my mind at the base of a slide in the jungle of backyard appurtenances that he had laid out for his first grandchild....

...I see their colors in the sun, magical reds, yellows, greens, purples, the same as one sees in many images of my current project, photographing abstract compositions of refracted color and light with translucent forms.” G.O.J.deLL

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photo credit: Courtesy of George O. Jackson de Llano