Artist Information
Artist
Jackson, PaulRole
Designer and folderNotes
About the artist:
Paul Jackson, born in 1956 near Leeds, England, developed an early passion for origami and went on to study Fine Art in London. Since 1983, he has worked as a professional paper artist, paper engineer, writer, and teacher, specialising in origami and the folded arts. He was one of the first to establish origami as a professional pursuit in the West.
Over the years, Jackson has published more than 40 books. His early titles focused on origami for adults and children, while his more recent work explores the application of folding techniques in design. He has taught these ideas to design students at over 80 universities and colleges in 13 countries, covering fields such as fashion, architecture, ceramics, jewellery, product design, and textiles. His teaching and work highlight his preference for forms that appear "discovered" within the paper rather than artificially constructed, aiming for simplicity, elegance, and conceptual boldness.
In addition to his teaching and writing, Jackson has played a major role in presenting origami as a Fine Art, exhibiting his folded sculptures in galleries and museums worldwide. He has curated pioneering exhibitions, completed numerous commercial commissions for print, digital media, and festivals, and has been a consultant for a variety of projects.
In 2000, after meeting Israeli artist and educator Miri Golan, founder of the Israeli Origami Center, Jackson moved to Israel. Together, they created Folding Together and Origametria, a programme that uses origami to teach geometry. Origametria was officially adopted into Israel’s National Mathematics Curriculum in 2018 and is now studied weekly by more than 30,000 primary school children.
Today, Paul Jackson continues to live in Herzliyya, Israel, where he teaches at art and design colleges. In 2017, he received the Sydney French Medal from the British Origami Society for his outstanding contributions to origami. He holds both British and Israeli citizenship.
Sources:
*Meher McArthur and Robert Lang, Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami (Washington, D.C.: International Arts & Artists, 2011), ISBN 978-0-9662859-6-3.
*www.origamimuseum.org