For more than six decades, Suzanne Jackson (b. 1944) has created lyrical, awe-inspiring paintings shaped by her deep respect for the natural world and persistent belief in the interconnectedness of all living things. As a Black artist, she has said that “it’s political to make an artwork about peace and beauty” as a reflection of “some other ways of being.” The first retrospective devoted to the full breadth of the artist’s career, “Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love” celebrates her groundbreaking vision through more than 60 paintings and drawings that make innovative use of color, light, and structure.

Jackson’s career began in the late 1960s, when she emerged as a central figure in Los Angeles’s African American art scene. Since then, she has drawn on her experiences as a dancer, poet, teacher, and theater designer to inform her visual art. Visitors can see the full scope of this output in the exhibition. Early ethereal compositions on canvas layer luminous washes of pigment with imagery drawn from Jackson’s dreams. Studies of leaves, trees, and mountains reflect the artist’s connection with the natural California landscape she inhabited in the 1980s. Inspired by theater and dance and informed by ancestral and cultural histories, her recent work moves off the wall to hang suspended in the air. Directly engaging light and space, these experimental works amalgamate the experiences and environments that have shaped Jackson’s career.