PARIS — Carling Jackson dreamed of being a world-class soccer player and competing for her native Canada in the Olympics.
Soccer led her to years of playing first at UL then at Southern, but injuries denied her dreams. But in a way, the pain she endured opened the door to a world she didn’t imagine: being an Olympic-class artist.
Jackson, 36, said she is the only artist in the world who paints exclusively for athletes. She was here in Paris during the Olympics to create two paintings for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
One is of basketball legend LaBron James and world No. 2 women’s tennis player Coco Gauff from the opening ceremony on the River Seine. The other is of the all-American women’s foil fencing final here between gold medalist Lee Keifer and silver medalist Lauren Scruggs.
Jackson said she spent five days on a stage at Team USA House here in Paris creating the two paintings, which will hang in the U.S. Olympic museum in Colorado Springs. The one of James and Gauff was especially nervewracking.
“There weren’t a lot of fantastic photos taken of them,” Jackson said. “It was raining and all this stuff. So I had to resort to messaging Olympians on the ship.”
Jackson got through to men’s tennis player Christopher Eubanks, Gauff’s best friend.
“I was like, ‘Chris, help me out here. I’ve got to paint Coco tomorrow. There weren’t any great photos. Do you have anything?’
“He sent me this incredible video he took right in front of Coco and LeBron. They’re just in their element, taking selfies and videoing and it was just beautiful.”
Jackson’s painting captures the joy of the rain-splashed moment, complete with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Athletes’ reactions, their faces, are what she enjoys painting most of all.
“Oftentimes sports photographers just capture the action,” Jackson said. “I’m like, ‘What about the joy? What about the moment they’re living.’ That’s what I wanted to capture.”
A native of White Rock, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver, Jackson was a soccer prodigy as a teenager.
She played for her first Canadian National team at age 15, an amazing feat. But at 17, Jackson tore an ACL, robbing her of her speed. She still had a dream of being a Division I soccer player in the United States. Tiring of the recruiting process and hampered by severe allergies, Jackson said she decided to commit to the first program that offered her.
That turned out to be UL, where she played center back and center midfielder from 2005-08. After becoming involved in the work being done by the NAACP, Jackson decided to transfer to Southern, where she played from 2009-11.
“Arizona State also ended up offering me after, but Louisiana was amazing,” Jackson said.
A back injury ended her athletic career in 2011 for good. So she went back to school and began teaching art while teaching herself to paint.
A career as a sports artist was born.
“I’m like, ‘What do I know? I know sports,’” Jackson said. “I know athletes, so I started painting for pro athletes in 2015 and then became a self-employed artist in 2017.”
It was the LeRoy Neiman Foundation, an organization named after the late celebrated sports artist, that was the conduit for Jackson to get the commission from the USOPC to paint for the organization in Paris.
“My name came up as the next LeRoy in a way. Passing the Olympic brush, you know?” Jackson said. “About four years ago I developed my own technique of speed painting in quite a lifelike way in a very short time. I did it at the (2022) World Cup in Qatar.
“When the USOPC found out they were like, ‘Oh, we have to bring her.’”
Jackson’s career has reached such a level that athletes and schools and teams pursue her to do work for them, not the other way around. She’s did a huge mural for former LSU and current Saints safety Tyrann Mathieu when he played for the Kansas City Chiefs. U.S. track star Twanisha Terry got Jackson to paint a surprise Christmas present portrait of LSU’s Sha’Carri Richardson after she won the 100-meter dash in last year’s world championships.
Richardson, Terry, Gabby Thomas and Melissa Jefferson won gold in the women’s 4x100 relay Friday night.
Jackson’s quest is to not be only active but an activist in her chosen profession. She said worldwide, female artists make 2% of what their male counterparts earn. She is also advocating for art to return to the Olympics as a medaled discipline, which it was from 1912-52.
“I feel like I’m trailblazing for women,” Jackson said. “I’m proud when art was part of the Olympics, but if you look at the rosters there was still like almost no women.”
Perhaps one day, Jackson will get to fulfill that part of her Olympic dream after all.