Jo Ellyn Rackleff

One Person Shows:
1987 Foxley Leach Gallery, Washington D.C.
1997 621 Gallery, Railroad Square, Tallahassee, Florida
2001-Pelican Place Gallery, Tallahassee, Florida
Other Exhibitions:
2003-Lemoyne Art Gallery, Tallahassee Florida
2002-Pelican Place Gallery Oct-Nov ”Two Women”
1999-621 Gallery, Railroad Square, Tallahassee, Florida
1998-Permanent Collection Show LeMoyne Art Foundation Gallery
1994, Southern Women, LeMoyne Art Foundation, City Hall, and Florida State University's Augustus B. Turnbull III Conference Center, Tallahassee, Florida,
1992-LeMoyne Art Foundation
1991-The Armegeddon Show, 621 Gallery. Railroad Square
1990-The Capitol Gallery, Tallahassee, Florida Six Florida Artists
1989-The Opera House, Monticello, Florida

Jo Ellyn Rackleff is a contemporary painter from the American South. The Washington Post dubbed her, "A sorcerer with paint."Dr. Elizabeth Hutton of the Phillips Gallery in Washington wrote of her work, "The viewer enters the work, much as the artist did, with a sense of spiritual question, a desire to experience the calligraphy of brushstroke and color and to encounter the undnown or hidden self.”
Her mysterious monumental figures and portraits are, according to Turner, "More often than are women—women with children, brides and widows—vessels of experience, memory, ate and most importantly, imagination. Each has a story to tell or, as Rackleff puts it, “Keep working until the figure is real enough to have his or her own story.” In this work where content is inextricably linked to form, the triangle of a woman’s brassiere, a bride’s veil, or of an angel’s wing, invests the painting with emotional as well as compositional possibilities. However, there are not pat solutions. Rackleff brings the peculiar possibilities of each painting to the point of resolution but her conclusions are always open-ended. The viewer enters the work, much as the artist did, with a sense of spiritual quest, a desire to experience the calligraphy of brushstroke and color and to encounter the unknown or hidden self.