The Queeny Park Art Festival was packed with people and vendors. The artists were selling things from colored copper pieces, to cut-out sillhouettes, to watercolor paintings. Most found success in selling things, but some lured their customers in.
Chrystal Jackson, one of the many artists at the Festival, sat in the corner of her booth wearing a bright pink and green floral print dress with an array of sparkling butterfly pins in her hair. Behind her is an enormous painting of three dolphins jumping in the air. She calls herself the, “butterfly lady.”
Jackson picked specific people out of the crowd and conversed with them to draw them to her booth.
She is most likely the most experienced artist here, at age 87. Many know her as the woman who paints butterflies, but few know the personality and stories behind them.
“I was showing at an art show at the west county mall and I had done a painting of the dairy barn. A woman came up and said, ‘I’d like to know who painted that.’ ‘I did,’ I said. She said, ‘I want you to paint me a butterfly.’ And I said, ‘I don’t paint butterflies.’ She said, ‘I can tell you’d be good at it. I can see it in your work,” Jackson said. She told the woman she’d try, and ended up really liking the work. It inspired her to continue painting butterflies.
“I’ve painted at least 500-1000 butterflies since then,” Jackson said.
Jackson describes butterflies as, “A cross between beautiful free spirits and guardian angels.” She said that when she paints them, she changes their features to make them more appealing. “Butterfly wings are naturally not that graceful, so I create them.”
Jackson was born in London, England but has lived in different places all over the world including Spain and New York, and her work has been shown in even more places. She currently has 171 paintings in the Smithsonian and her work is in the archives of the National Gallery of Art’s contemporary section.
Jackson’s family shares the passion for creativity. Her mother was an esteemed photographer, and her son is a composer.
“I find inspiration in the simplest things, like a jeweled spider web in the morning,” Jackson said. She prefers to paint things metaphorically and interpretively as opposed to literally. She says the style keeps her young and in touch with reality.
Jackson’s advice to all students at Lafayette: “Enjoy your family. Be a fortress. Stick together and don’t let anyone divide and conquer you.”
