Goat Tails and Doodlebugs
As a testimony to the notion that art imitates life, Goat Tails and Doodlebugs: A Journey Toward Art presents turning points, great and small, in the long and illustrious career of one border artist. In this, his fourth book, Everett Gee Jackson recounts tales from his earliest memories through his youth and college years which reveal the gentle nudges that life gave him on the journey to his career as an artist and, especially, as a painter of the Mexican and Central American scene. A childhood in Mexia, Texas, is the starting place for these events, and Jackson's youthful wonder is preserved as he shares stories of his family, friends, and the characters of his hometown. Most revealing, though, are the influences of college and his camping trips in Mexico which professionally and geographically changed his direction in life. As one of several distinguished American artists who worked in Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s, Everett Gee Jackson developed a great appreciation for the Mexican people and landscape. Goat Tails and Doodlebugs concludes as Jackson and fellow artist Lowell Houser acknowledge the call from south of the border which would inspire their art for many years to come. Jackson's talent for observing the scene and situation before him is an essential part of his artistic interpretation. That such a delight in detail should translate into consummate story-telling as well as dexterity with oil paint, then, should come as no surprise. Told with remarkable humor and intelligence, the supposedly incidental events of life become a road that seems prepared by destiny for just this traveler and artist, Everett Gee Jackson.
