Opening reception: Friday, August 7, 5:30 - 8 pm

Steven Zevitas Gallery is pleased to present Primary Sources, a two-person exhibition by Alex Jackson and Jordan Seaberry. The exhibition will be on view from September 4 - October 17, 2026, with an opening reception on September 4 from 5:30 - 8 pm. 

The myth of the artist working alone in the studio is a subtle but persistent fallacy. Although painters may apply pigment to canvas in isolation, the foundations of their images, and the conceptual frameworks that support them, are often built through connection and exchange. For more than a decade, artists Alex Jackson and Jordan Seaberry have shared countless hours of conversation, moving between literature and media and life’s joys and sorrows, always sprinkled with the mundane humor of everyday existence. Primary Sources serves as a bibliography of their friendship, with each artist paying homage to the moments, ideas, and objects that have shaped their development together as artists and as people.

In beginning his body of seven paintings, Seaberry established a set of material parameters intended to create a physical relationship between the canvases and the architecture of their friendship. The dimensions of each painting correspond to the distance between two meaningful locations in their shared history. Those distances were then translated through the golden ratio—a nod to Jackson’s precise methodology. Working within this framework, Seaberry allowed his hand and exploratory instincts to take over. Images emerge through references to fleeting yet significant experiences and possibilities: fragments of Jackson’s portrait dissolve and reappear as mapped constellations, while energizing bolts of lightning strike the palm of a hand. Rather than offering direct depictions, Seaberry creates emotional portraits of the elemental forces and seasonal changes that shape human connection.

Each of Jackson’s seven paintings depicts a work of literature that he has read and discussed with Seaberry over the course of their friendship. The selected titles—Beloved, Kindred, The Interpreter of Maladies, Freedom Dreams, Travel & See, Scenes of Subjection, and Pather Panchali—contain language and ideas that speak directly to kinship. Jackson’s painted lettering recalls his time as a sign painter at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, where he and Seaberry first met as roommates. Rather than direct depictions of book covers, these paintings serve as portraits of Jackson’s extended engagement with the texts and his desire to mark their importance and shared presence, offering a new visual experience of their contents. These paintings function as citations: visual footnotes honoring years of fervent conversation. Dedicated to succinctly documenting these stories’ life and afterlife, Jackson pays homage to the ways books—and the ideas they contain—are inherited, revisited, and shared.

Each of Jackson’s seven paintings depicts a work of literature that he has read and discussed with Seaberry over the course of their friendship. The selected titles—Beloved, Kindred, The Interpreter of Maladies, Freedom Dreams, Travel & See, Scenes of Subjection, and Pather Panchali—contain language and ideas that speak to kinship. Jackson’s painted lettering recalls his time as a sign painter at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, where he and Seaberry first met as roommates. Rather than observational paintings of the books themselves, these paintings offer new visual experiences of their contents through propositions of alternative book covers. Serving as objects of Jackson’s extended engagement with the texts and his desire to mark their importance and shared presence, they function as citations: visual footnotes honoring years of fervent conversation. Dedicated to succinctly documenting these stories’ life and afterlife, Jackson pays homage to the ways books—and the ideas they contain—are inherited, revisited, and shared. 

While Seaberry’s practice is typically grounded in the past, Jackson’s often contemplates possible futures. Primary Sources honors both the intimate histories upon which their friendship has been built and the architecture of language that will sustain it in the years ahead. Through this shared catalogue, their work and their minds meet, at last, in the present.