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05/31/2013 10:00 AMElizabeth Gillette Jackson, 92, painter and poet, known under the pen name of Leslie Jackson, died in the Branford Connecticut Hospice on May 22. She was the wife of Robert Louis Jackson, professor (emeritus) of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Leslie was born in Rochester, New York, on March 14, 1921, daughter of L. William Gillette and Emily Mann Gillette. She graduated from the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. in 1938 and studied at Swarthmore College, receiving a degree in Latin American studies at the University of Wisconsin and an MFA (Fine Arts) from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1952.
Leslie’s early art work, in woodcuts in particular, began with several extended stays in Mexico in the early 1940s. She spent two years painting in France (Paris, Strasbourg) in the1960s and six months in Russia (Leningrad in 1974) focusing on Russian icons and architecture (her “Drawings of Leningrad” were exhibited at the Folger Library in Washington D.C. in 1975).
Leslie was fluent in French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian.
She married Robert Louis Jackson in 1951 and they moved to Branford in 1954, and then to Guilford in 1966.
Leslie pursued an art career of over 65 years, with studios in Guilford, as well as in Truro, Massachusetts, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. Leslie taught drawing and painting at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill in Truro for 30 years and at the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven for 20 years. She also taught several college seminars in drawing and Russian avant garde art at Yale University.
Leslie exhibited her prints, drawings, and paintings in acrylic and watercolors in United States as well as in Italy. She was well-known, too, for her “icons” and triptychs—works on wood that combine carving, ink, acrylic, and collage, and that engage mythopoetic themes. She also published two small collections on poetry and drawings, A Poet in Spain and A Strange Light.
Besides her husband, she is survived by her daughters Emily Robin Jackson and Kathy Ellen Jackson, and by five grandchildren, Emily, Jesse, Ella, Jackson, and Sumaia.
A “Celebration of Life: Leslie Jackson” will take place at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, 10 Meetinghouse Rd., Truro, Massachusetts, on Saturday Aug. 3, from 2 to 4 p.m. If anyone wishes to make a donation for the newly created “Leslie Jackson Chair for the Arts,” please send it c/o Cheri Mittenthal, Director, Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, Box 756, Truro, MA 02666..