Marjorie Mayfield Jackson has always been a storyteller — only the medium has changed.

 Long before she returned to the studio, Marjorie once staged a one-woman exhibition spanning five forms of expression: pantomime, pottery, painting, sculpture, and poetry. It was an artistic declaration that, at the time, had no obvious place to land.

Instead, life carried her elsewhere.

After studying art and art history at the University of South Florida’s honors school, Marjorie stepped into journalism, where her eye for truth earned her a Pulitzer nomination at The Virginian-Pilot. Later, that clarity of vision fueled more than three decades of environmental leadership as founding executive director of the Elizabeth River Project, succeeding against the odds to return wetlands, oysters, otters, seahorses and more to an urban river once presumed dead.

  Now, returning full-circle, Marjorie is re-focusing on art- particularly portraiture, generously defined. Having dabbled in watercolors through the years, she now adds oils for a deeper telling of humans, horses, dogs and wild beings. 

Her portraits seek what journalism once demanded: honesty. And they carry what environmental work required: devotion—to place, to life, to the quiet dignity of the natural world.

This is art shaped by experience, compassion, and wonder. 

And it is only just beginning again.

 Photo courtesy of Eric Lusher 

From the artist: Many thanks to my friend and 

multi-talented artist Deb Colvin for these web pages.