“Best known as an artist who produces dazzling seascapes and dynamic landscape paintings, Kurt Jackson is also fascinated by wildlife and a passionate campaigner on environmental issues.
Before embarking on an artistic route, Jackson studied zoology at Oxford. His research into hymenoptera [winged insects] led him to focus on Amazonian wasps. In fact, samples he brought back from his travels are in the museum collection. Keen to explore the importance of bees in our ecosystem and evidence of their declining numbers, he keeps bees at his home in Cornwall.
Jackson has produced some impressively massive paintings of swarms, as well as close-ups of hives, painted while wearing his full beekeeper outfit – something of an accomplishment when you think about it.
I like this particular picture, however, because it’s a great example of the textures and layers he uses in a lot of his work. You can see the spiky leaves and prickly thistles, the cobwebs and the bees at the top of the flowers.
Jackson painted it en plein air at Badbury Rings in Dorset, an iron age fort that is now a wonderful nature reserve with an amazing array of wildlife. Woolly thistles are not the most obvious or picturesque subject for an artist, but they are architectural and dramatic to look at and they attract large numbers of bees.
This picture highlights the importance of this kind of uncontrolled wild space; one of the themes of our exhibition is the importance of not keeping gardens too perfect or pristine. We’re combining art and science to present the latest information on threats to bee populations, from the loss of natural habitats to the use of modern pesticides.
Research is still being carried out into new types of pesticides, such as neonicotinoids, but there is evidence that they affect bees’ navigational abilities as well as their general development and behaviour.
It’s estimated that one third of the food we eat depends on bee pollination. And while wasps can be a nuisance during a picnic, one of our displays shows their importance as predators and pollinators. Wasps are a gardener’s friend.
The exhibition also features an observation beehive that allows you to glimpse their hard work and complicated behaviour patterns. There are objects from the collection on show too, including pinned specimens of the 270 species of bee we have in this country. That number of species comes as a shock to most people, who tend to think only of the honey and bumble varieties of bee.”
Rachel Parle is the public engagement manager at Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Interview by John Holt. Kurt Jackson: Bees (and the odd wasp) in my Bonnet runs at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History until 29 September.
Before embarking on an artistic route, Jackson studied zoology at Oxford. His research into hymenoptera [winged insects] led him to focus on Amazonian wasps. In fact, samples he brought back from his travels are in the museum collection. Keen to explore the importance of bees in our ecosystem and evidence of their declining numbers, he keeps bees at his home in Cornwall.
Jackson has produced some impressively massive paintings of swarms, as well as close-ups of hives, painted while wearing his full beekeeper outfit – something of an accomplishment when you think about it.
I like this particular picture, however, because it’s a great example of the textures and layers he uses in a lot of his work. You can see the spiky leaves and prickly thistles, the cobwebs and the bees at the top of the flowers.
Jackson painted it en plein air at Badbury Rings in Dorset, an iron age fort that is now a wonderful nature reserve with an amazing array of wildlife. Woolly thistles are not the most obvious or picturesque subject for an artist, but they are architectural and dramatic to look at and they attract large numbers of bees.
This picture highlights the importance of this kind of uncontrolled wild space; one of the themes of our exhibition is the importance of not keeping gardens too perfect or pristine. We’re combining art and science to present the latest information on threats to bee populations, from the loss of natural habitats to the use of modern pesticides.
Research is still being carried out into new types of pesticides, such as neonicotinoids, but there is evidence that they affect bees’ navigational abilities as well as their general development and behaviour.
It’s estimated that one third of the food we eat depends on bee pollination. And while wasps can be a nuisance during a picnic, one of our displays shows their importance as predators and pollinators. Wasps are a gardener’s friend.
The exhibition also features an observation beehive that allows you to glimpse their hard work and complicated behaviour patterns. There are objects from the collection on show too, including pinned specimens of the 270 species of bee we have in this country. That number of species comes as a shock to most people, who tend to think only of the honey and bumble varieties of bee.”
Rachel Parle is the public engagement manager at Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Interview by John Holt. Kurt Jackson: Bees (and the odd wasp) in my Bonnet runs at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History until 29 September.
