Jackie Wukela
“My hope is to explore the world of color and light, looking at things we see every day and recording them during a moment of magic. After several years as an elementary school teacher and then full time wife and mother, Jackie now devotes her time to her art.
Educated in Georgia with a degree in education and further work in art at the University of South Carolina, Jackie has been doing commission work for over 25 years. Although she began in working in acrylics, over the years patron requests have led to study and work in watercolor, pencil, colored pencil, pastels, and oils. “Commission work spawns ideas, so it becomes at once a luxury and then a necessity to have time to try out new techniques and ideas or to develop old interests . I try not to get bogged down in one medium for too long. I do a large number of portrait commissions in oil and colored pencil, but my most innovative work is in abstraction—oil and collage.
A member of The Portrait Society of America, a Member of Excellence of the South Carolina Watercolor Society, and a Signature member of the Colored Pencil Society of America, Jackie now lives and works in Florence, S.C. She and business partner, Lynda English, have formed the Lynda English Studio and Gallery. She teaches open studio to adults as well as workshops in several media.
Jackie’s ten foot canvas work, “River Tree,” is on display at the Florence Hotel.
In August, 2004, Jackie won the top award for the International Colored Pencil Exhibition and the Cippy Award. This prize was given to the Nassau Lady VIII. Nassau Lady VIII is one of a series of 13 Nassau pieces.. Works from this series have won 14 awards for pieces in four
different methods during the last eighteen months. “Although winning the Colored Pencil Award was sensational, I am particularly pleased that the entire series is being recognized. It is very important to me to work well in different media. I especially love taking a set of good photos this way and working them over and over in several techniques. It’s a wonderful learning experience and since many times they are figures, they seem to display not only the different facets of their personality, but the facets of my own as well.”