Painter, poet, set designer, gallery owner and dancer, Suzanne Jackson was born in 1944 in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska. She has examined a variety of media and themes in her art throughout her career, but African and Native American symbolism have remained constant within her oeuvre.

Jackson attended San Francisco State College and Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles in 1967 where she studied drawing with Charles White. From 1968 to 1970 Jackson ran Gallery 32 in Los Angeles. Gallery 32 was inspired by Charles White’s philosophy that art could be an effective vehicle for community activism and social change and showcased art by emerging African American artists. In 1970, the gallery held the Sapphire Show, the first Los Angeles survey of African American women artists.

As an educator, Jackson taught classes at the Watts Towers Art Center in Los Angeles from 1967-68. She served as chair of the department of fine and performing arts at the Eliott-Pope Preparatory School, Idyllwild, CA from 1982-1985, was an assistant professor in the department of dramatic arts at St. Mary’s College of Maryland from 1994-1996, and was a professor of art and design at the Savannah College of Art and Design from 1996 until her retirement in 2011.

Jackson has had several solo exhibitions at Ankrum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA in the seventies and exhibited extensively throughout her career in group exhibitions including:

Two Generations of Black Artists, California State University, Los Angeles, CA, 1970

Blacks: USA: 1973; New York Cultural Center, NY, 1973

West Coast 74: The Black Image, 1974

Directions in Afro-American Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

California Black Artists, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 1977

Contextures, Just Above Midtown Gallery, NY, 1978

19 Sixties: A Cultural Awakening Re-Evaluated, 1965-1975, California African American Museum, 1989

Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, Hammer Museum, CA, 2011.