'He devoted his life to these things': Late Pittsburgh artist Charles Jackson showcased at Greensburg Art Center
Walking through Sandra Jackson’s childhood home is akin to walking through an art museum.
The Perrysville Avenue property in Pittsburgh’s North Side holds the artwork of Jackson’s father, Charles Jackson, who devoted nearly six decades of his life to documenting the city through paintings.
A selection of his work — acrylic paintings showcasing Pittsburgh scenes from the 1980s and early 2000s — is on display at the Greensburg Art Center in his memory until Aug. 22. He died in 2016.
“Since he devoted his life to these things, I didn’t want them to be completely forgotten,” said Sandra Jackson of Ligonier. “It seems like they’re just sitting, gathering dust, and that seemed a shame.
“I mean, he really threw his whole self into these things. It’s nice to think about him, since he’s gone. It’s like spending time with him in a way.”
Charles Jackson was born in 1929 to the former owners of Pittsburgh-Des Moines Steel Co.’s plant on Neville Island. He studied architecture at Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon, and art at Yale before serving in the Air Force.
He taught photography at the Community College of Allegheny County for about five years and occasionally used his architecture degree to design local buildings, including the Coraopolis Municipal Building, his daughter said.
But Charles Jackson’s real passion was his art.
“He was very hardworking. He took it very seriously, and he could be a bit distant,” Sandra said. “He was sort of a Renaissance man, considered himself an intellectual.”
Though Jackson’s early art career was marked by abstract and expressionist pieces, realistic painting quickly caught his attention.
A home on Federal Street, a storefront along the Strip District, the 16th Street Bridge, a bus stop Downtown and cars lined up at the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix are all showcased in the Greensburg Art Center exhibit.
Rose Sovyak, president of the center, considers the exhibit a celebration of art.
“I love the city of Pittsburgh, and I love Western Pennsylvania,” Sovyak said. “All of his artwork was kind of hidden until he brought it forth for this exhibit, and we worked very hard to get it up. … Just to bring his artwork alive again is why we wanted to do it.”
It’s not the first time the art center has expanded beyond its Hempfield location. The center recently hosted a collaborative exhibit with the Pittsburgh Society of Artists.
Energy Swing Windows has invited the art center’s members to submit window paintings to be auctioned during its annual 5K benefiting diabetes at Acrisure Stadium. Submissions are due Sept. 29.
An art center member, Sandra Jackson enjoys painting landscapes outside near her Ligonier home. She tries to carry on her father’s love of artistic expression.
“He was working toward the end — still curious, still completely mentally sound and active,” she said. “I try to stay alert and curious about life, too, like him.”
The Greensburg Art Center, at 230 Todd School Road in Hempfield, is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The exhibit is free to view.
Quincey Reese is a TribLive reporter covering the Greensburg and Hempfield areas. She also does reporting for the Penn-Trafford Star. A Penn Township native, she joined the Trib in 2023 after working as a Jim Borden Scholarship intern at the company for two summers. She can be reached at qreese@triblive.com.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.