‘Our attitude is the key to discovering the world. Obviously, we have a certain attitude toward ourselves, a certain attitude in relating to others, and a certain attitude in dealing with our world at large. If we haven’t developed the right kind of attitude, it is impossible to connect with the world properly. Art involves relating with oneself and one’s phenomenal world gracefully. In this case, the word gracefully has the sense of nonaggression, gentleness, and upliftedness: that is, a basic attitude of cheerfulness. It is important in becoming artists to make sure that we do not pollute this world: moreover, as artists we can actually beautify the world.’ Trungpa Rinpoche True Perceptions 2008
Jaime Jackson is a collaborative biophilic (love of nature) studio based and relational artist. His practice uses drawing and painting as well as digital technologies including Machine Learning AI, Motion Capture, Augmented Reality and moving image (film). ‘My work responds to the climate and ecology crisis by exploring the idea that we are nature, and the gap and separation from the natural world that people experience today is a response to social conditioning.This feeling of separation is what has created the earth crisis and when we develop ways and tools of understanding our inter-connective selves we can become happier more resilient and grounded people.’
‘Perhaps that’s what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle, perhaps that’s what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on the one side the outside, on the other the inside’. Samuel Beckett The Un-namable 1953
‘I use both traditional and digital art processes with nature to engage younger people and challenge the view that art is a separate and unique experience accessible to only a few, when in fact I believe we all creative people capable of imagining a better and more equitable world. By challenging the view that nature and digital are separate I hope to unpick the corresponding ideology that we are separate unrelated individuals.’
‘What if our indeterminate life form was not the shape of our bodies but rather the shape of our motions over time? Such indeterminacy expands our concept of human life, showing us how we are transformed by encounter’. Anna Lowen Haupt Tsing The mushroom at the End of the world.
Born in Oxford Jaime has a degree in Fine Art Painting from Coventry University and trained in Arts Management at Sussex University. Jaime has shown artwork at Latitude, Kingdom Project, Bloomsbury festival, Ikon Gallery, Sluice Berlin, The Nature of Cities Festival and Lisbon Art Week. His passion and understanding of nature comes from his experiences as a child presenter for BBC Radio Oxford’s Nature Trail, a weekly radio program recorded in nature locations across the South Midlands and South of England over 7 years.
He is a director of Culture Declares Emergency and an associate artist of Climate Museum UK, he is a Birmingham member of the Biophilic City Network, and Director of the visual art organisation Salt Road, the WASH nature and climate centre in East Birmingham and the environmental charity New Leaf
Jaime collaborates with climate and ecology crisis scientists, including sociology, human and environmental geography, marine science, ethnobotany and eco-psychology. He develops collaborative art practices to communicate and interpret climate change science through the lens of biophilia (love of nature).
He engages vulnerable communities in digital environmental projects through relational practice and co-production, Jaime created digital and traditional interventions in this gap, to re-imagine or re‐connect these biophilic connections with nature via contemporary art using moving image installations and architectural projections.
Jaime was the lease holder and co-founded Phoenix Gallery and Studios in Brighton (1991) originally named Eye Level, which now provides studio spaces and workshops for over 100 artists and runs a visual art exhibition program. He was a public art officer and consultant across the public and private sectors.