Students, faculty and visitors who enter the lobby of the Center for Food Science and Technology building are greeted with six magnificent oil paintings by the late Alice West Jackson, a former UMES fine arts student.
Each of the 42” X 51” paintings depicts Black female farm laborer from a bygone era when a dominant truck crop in Somerset County was the strawberry. Jackson’s work — collectively called “Homage to Strawberry Workers — captures the essence of some of the activities of the female figure in and around strawberry fields on the Eastern Shore.
“The food science building is the perfect place … for my paintings,” Jackson said. “The paintings and the building complement each other.”
She created the award-winning paintings in the fine arts department in 1986 and 1987 under the supervision of Kenneth Rogers, her teacher.
Jackson stumbled into being an artist by accident when in 1955 she purchase supplies for her oldest son, James, who had showed an interest in drawing. She found herself drawn in to helping him by urging him to add colors to his sketches.
She would go on to study under Michael Miceli, George Llewellyn, Roberta Clark, William Greet, Howard Schroeder, Walter Reifsnyder and Katherine Sailer.
Her portfolio of works included acrylics, charcoal, egg tempera, oil, pen and ink drawings and pastels.
“Versality is what I like, too,” Jackson said in an Oct. 2, 1981 article published in The (Salisbury) Daily Times.
Her favorite medium at the time, Jackson told the newspaper, was pastel portraiture.
In October 2007, when Jackson donated her the paintings depicting field laborers working in a shed prepping the plants, setting them out in fields and then harvesting the fruit, the Claymont, Del. native called it “an honor to give my work to the university” she expressed hope would be enjoyed and cherished for generations to come.
Veteran educator and UMES alumnus Ernest Satchell, who retired in 2010, was grateful and touched by this legacy of art.
“Alice was a fine artist, and a good friend of the university,” said Satchell, who was the long-time art department chairman. “It is with pride that we display her work on campus.”
Want to see the paintings in person? Stop by the building on the east side of campus and take a moment to enjoy the work of a talented alumna.
Alice West Jackson died July 5, 2009. She was 91.
