March 10, 2005--Jeannie Jackson, 62, died at home in Newark on March 8 as a result of thymic cancer.

For 14 years she was employed as a photographer and graphic artist at the University of Delaware, working first in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources’ communications office and later in what is now the Creative Services group in the Office of Public Relations. She retired from UD in 2000.

A self-taught studio artist, illustrator, graphic designer and photographer, she produced 26 oil paintings as illustrations for a children's book, Squizzy the Black Squirrel, A Fabulous Fable of Friendship, written by the well-known civil rights activist and journalist Chuck Stone and published by Open Hand Press in 2003. Her work on the book was supported by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, and the book won several national honors, including the Skipping Stones Honor Award for children's literature, given by Skipping Stones magazine in 2004.

Born in Orgas, W. Va., Ms. Jackson graduated from Sherman High School in nearby Seth. In recent years she had been working on a series of paintings of Boone County, W.Va., focusing on the lives of coal miners and the mountainous landscape where she grew up in a large family living along the Big Coal River south of Charleston.

After 18 years spent managing an in-home beauty salon, she became a professional photographer and manager of Arehart Photography Studio in Elkton, Md. In 1981, she won first place for color photography in the Kodak International Newspaper Snapshot Awards Competition.

She designed the cover and interior of a book, The Journalist's Craft, edited by her husband, Dennis Jackson, UD English professor, and John Sweeney, public editor of the Wilmington News Journal. That book was published by Allworth Press in 2002.

Some of Ms. Jackson's paintings featured Native American motifs (inspired by a Cherokee ancestor some four generations back), while others were based on the symbolism of dreams. She expressed particular interest in interpreting, through her art, some of the writings of the British author D.H. Lawrence, notably his treatment of the theme of psychic rebirth.

She worked in oils, watercolors, pastels, gouache and mixed media, and her paintings, as well as her photographs and graphic designs, were exhibited in numerous juried shows on the East Coast, including the annual Smyrna-Clayton Delaware Heritage Association's three-day art exhibition and Hardcastle Gallery's "20th Annual Evening of Art" at UD’s Goodstay Center in Wilmington. She was "Artist of the Month" at the Dover Art League gallery in September 1999. The previous year, one of her oil paintings, "A Long Way From Home," hung in a special year-long "Civil War Mixed Media Exhibit" at Pea Patch Island, Fort Delaware.

Her paintings, photographs, poems and stories appeared in various periodicals. She was the featured artist in the June 2003 issue of Mountain Echoes, an online monthly magazine of Appalachian culture.

She is survived by her husband; by her daughter and son-in-law, Marcia and Jeff Powers of Elkton, Md.; by her son and daughter-in-law, David and Elizabeth Arehart of Delhi, N.Y.; and by her grandchildren, Jessica and Brittany Powers and Libbie, Ben, Molly and Anna Arehart; as well as her brother, Harvey Ferrell; and sisters, Terri Ferrell Stewart of Sylvester, W.Va., Sandra Ferrell Stevens of Franklin, Ohio, and Rebecca Ferrell Hutchinson of Omaha, Neb.

A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m., Saturday, March 12, with visitation at 10 a.m., at Baldwin United Methodist Church at 756 Elk Mills Rd., in Elk Mills, Md. Burial will be in Cherry Hill Methodist Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions in Ms. Jackson’s memory to Delaware Hospice, 3515 Silverside Rd., Wilmington, DE 19810.