​WESTERLO — Artist Tim Jackson’s creations are the focus of an exhibit this weekend at the Big Eye Gallery in South Westerlo. His work, which infuses Egyptian hieroglyphs and modern psychology with humor, is particularly celebrated as Jackson, a stroke victim, creates with his only functional, yet less-dominant, hand.  

“Tim has created a most incredible body of work,” said his lifelong friend, Joel Glucksman, who described himself as a guest curator for his wife, gallery owner Hope Konecny, who created the cooperative art center last year.

“The eye of the soul sees all,” said Konecny previously in an opening release, explaining how she chose the name of the gallery. “The Big Eye feels all and expresses what it sees and feels through art.”

Her description matches Jackson, who, nearing 70, found art unavoidable after a stroke two years ago left him unable to use his right side and unable to speak easily.

Jackson, his friend said, began “to engage in artwork in order to survive.”

“Something that is very common in today’s art is that it’s coy, or abstract,” Glucksman said. “His is very upfront, and you understand the subject matter. The expression, ...in structure, it evokes classic and modern. There is a psychological representation of the states of mind in the people he depicts.”   

Jackson, whose mother wrote the children’s classic “The Saggy Baggy Elephant,” began his adult life studying art at the Pratt Institute.

“He was always a lively fellow,” Glucksman said. Jackson dropped out of Pratt due to the pressure of being a self-supporting artist, Glucksman said.

“To be an artist as one’s life work was too daunting,” Glucksman explained.

Jackson joined a band, and designed and sold a spray-paint fashion line in the 1970s, before becoming a computer consultant and a Morristown, New Jersey councilman.

After his stroke, Jackson used his art to bring himself “back from almost extinction,” Glucksman said.

His work, once finely done with pen and ink, emerged, after his stroke, through pastel crayon.

“It shows his first drawings out of the stroke,” Glucksman said of pieces on display at the Big Eye exhibit. “He knew he had to do it — his back was against the wall. If you don’t do it, you fall off the Earth.”

Jackson has a great regard for Egyptian tonalism, his friend said, and his work expresses that in both a modern and an ancient way that suggests secret sources and intimations of human behavior.

“The vibrations that come from it are ancient,” Glucksman said.

Jackson, himself, also respects the Revolutionary War history of his hometown, Morristown, and his interest in both eras can be seen in his work, Glucksman said.

One piece, with modern figures walking on a sidewalk, with Egyptian figures peeking in from the past, shows synchronized movement, he said. His work shows a “two-way stream,” Glucksman said. “It’s very fluid.”

Jackson’s work has been featured in several shows in New Jersey, including at Arts Unbound, a not-for-profit gallery dedicated to the art of those with disabilities.

The show at Big Eye Gallery in South Westerlo expresses Jackson’s “individuality fighting back against forces,” and his “development that leads from death” to an expression about life, Glucksman said.

“His work is hardly entirely serious,” he said. Jackson’s satiric pen and ink work has evolved into art that still contains an undercurrent of humor, Glucksman said.

Among the works to be exhibited Saturday is a series of smaller pieces done with a computer drawing program, in which Jackson, “as a pen, used a clunky mouse...yet, he finds delicate things,” Glucksman said.

In one piece, Jackson depicts an Egyptian priest receiving a modern-day diploma. In another, a deceased bull is surrounded by stars but finds that everything “is still OK and grand,” Glucksman said. In one, a balloon obliterates the background, while the original priest looks on, un-amused. “But, look at the explosion death creates!” he said.

Some of Jackson’s work has a cartoon style, his friend said, but contains true detail.

“He’s not shy about declaring what it is,” Glucksman said of Jackson. “You may have to look.”

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The Big Eye Gallery in South Westerlo will hold an opening with artist Tim Jackson on Saturday, April 9, from 1 to 4 p.m. at 270 Route 405. For  more information, contact the gallery at (518) 966-5833. The gallery is open on Fridays from 4 to 7 p.m. and weekends from 1 to 4 p.m.