Local Artist of the Week

When your mother is an artist and your father is a musician, good things are bound to happen.

Joanna Jackson grew up with paintbrushes and instruments lying around the house. She has combined her parents' talents into a talent of her own, painting musician portraits. Jackson began her artistic career in Hollywood going to school for special effects and becoming a make-up artist for film.

After two years of living in Los Angeles, Jackson moved back to the Caribbean and found herself painting in the spare time she had between working on film sets. Her style has evolved over the years from more realistic images of buildings into more graphic interpretations of reality. She paints large-scale acrylic works of art on wood from photographs and works mostly on commissioned pieces.

Her current project is designing the T-shirt for the annual local Turkey Run. A member of the Charleston Artists Guild for two years, Jackson participates in a weekly outdoor sidewalk art show every Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m.-5 p.m. doing live paintings on the corner of Meeting and Cumberland Street.

This Saturday will be her last week with the guild on Meeting Street in preparation for Piccolo Spoleto, where she will have a booth May 22-June 6 in Marion Square Park. Jackson will also be participating in the Portrait Slam at Eye Level Art on May 30.

Web site: www.joannasstudio.com.

Birth date and place: April 2, 1982, Montserrat, Caribbean.

Residence: Downtown, 8 years.

Career: Cooper River Bridge Run Office, 6 years.

Goals: "To create high art, to never do prints and become a full time painter. I'd like to have a working studio downtown where people can come by as I paint or to purchase art."

Next Project: "I just won a grant from the Expansion Arts Fund to create a life size sculpture of a firefighter."

Price Range: $300-$1,000. "An 18x24 piece would range from $500-$700 depending on the amount of detail."

Currently Reading: "The Mammoth Hunters-Earth's Children" by Jean M. Auel.