LewAllen Galleries is pleased to announce Primal field / Interval, an exhibition of new paintings and monotypes by San Francisco-based artist Henry Jackson. The exhibition runs from May 15, 2026, through June 20, 2026.

Over a career spanning more than three decades, Jackson has developed a singular visual language that reconciles the rigorous traditions of Bay Area Figuration with the raw energy of Abstract Expressionism. While historical forebears like David Park famously struggled to bridge these two modalities, Jackson’s work achieves a synergistic resolution. In this new body of work, the artist explores the “threshold of physical existence”—a space where the human form exists in a flickering state between presence and dissolution.

Jackson’s paintings are characterized by a dense stratigraphy of oil paint and cold wax. Eschewing traditional brushes for masonry trowels, steel scrapers, and blades, the artist builds and subsequently excavates layers of pigment. This mirrors geological formation, creating what Jackson calls an “elemental field.” Within these roiling color fields, the figure is unearthed from the material, suggesting an identity found not in surface detail, but in the enduring, totemic presence of the body.

The exhibition also features oil-based monotypes created through a performative process of physical translation. In the studio, the artist identifies “material happenings”—spontaneous incidents of pigment and gesture—on the plate before they are permanently emblazoned upon the fiber of the paper, producing a fixed artifact of intention.

Throughout both mediums, Jackson directs focus toward the structural presence of the figure by systematically obscuring individual identity. By withholding specific likeness, he invites the viewer into a psychological engagement where the mind instinctively seeks to liberate the form from the surrounding abstraction. This approach allows the figures to transcend the personal and enter the realm of archetypes—operating on the understanding that the most.