Cath Jackson (born 1957) is a British lesbian cartoonist who was primarily active in the 1980s and 1990s. The subject of her cartoons were of a socio-political nature and accompanied articles and other artistic works that spoke for women's health and rights.
Career
Cath Jackson started her career in the early 1980s as a cub journalist on International Construction Magazine and later transitioned to being a freelance cartoonist.[1] Her artistic focus, as a lesbian cartoonist, was largely centred on political activism and questioning feminist positions.[1][2][3] Jackson began producing comic strips in 1981 for magazines such as Nursing Times and City Limits.[1][4] The New Statesman, a British magazine well known for its upfront and confrontational outlook on global politics,[5] also displayed her work on its cover of 26 July 1985.[6] In addition, she drew cartoons for an aids instructional pamphlet targeted at women and produced by the Terrence Higgins Trust.[7]
She began contributing to Trouble and Strife in Spring 1984 and she regularly helped produce the magazine until the summer of 1993.[8][9]Trouble and Strife generated articles that advocated for "radical feminism" from 1983 to 2002.[10] In 2014 Jackson returned as an illustrator for the magazine on the topic of anti-gay legislation at the Sochi Olympics.[11] Some of her cartoons from these publications were later reproduced on post cards for Cath Tate Cards.[1] Jackson met Cath Tate through a mutual acquaintance that worked for the novelty book store Silvermoon.[12] During the 1990s Jackson was featured in several anthologies produced by Roz Warren, all of which were themed on contemporary lesbian and women's humour.[13][14][15]
She was featured in the book The Inking Woman: 250 years of women cartoon and comic artists in Britain (Myriad Editions, 2018), which compiled the works from the 2017 art exhibit held at the Cartoon Museum in London.[1]
