Art & Music
Jack Dell started painting in 1977. He bought a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, picked up pastels, chalk, and colored pencils, and started working from imagination and from life. He never stopped.
The paintings in Coming Home span nearly fifty years. One inspired a poem he didn’t write until 2025. All of them were made by hand, for the same reason Jack writes: because something needed to be put down. He began working with imagination, emotion, and intensity.
Over the next 50 years, Jack revisited Coming Home and all the other paintings, drawings, and sketches. The poetry in this book gave him the perfect vehicle to amplify and clarify the ponderings of life that belong to every one of us.
Because all of us are Coming Home soon.
THE MESSENGER
Bahamian Woman Colored Pencil by Jack Dell. Inspired by an old magazine photo.
Prayer for Guidance by Jack Dell.
Coming Home, pastel by Jack Dell.
The Jealous Man pastel by Jack Dell.
Jack Dell has worked with award-winning vocal coach Judy Rodman to record original music in Nashville. His first album, Jack O Hearts, featured 13 covers of famous songs by the likes of Bob Dylan and Otis Redding.
Jack O Hearts 2 includes two original songs—“Too Old for Dying Young” and “Friends and Lots of Wine”—as well as covers of John Fogerty’s “Rock and Roll Girls” and Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles.”
His newest album, Coming Home Jack Dell, features five original songs based on poems in the book: “Fast Hard Ride”, “Ain’t No Songs for Old Men”, “Friends and Lots of Wine”, “Too Old for Dying Young”, and “Living Work of Art.”
All are available to listen to now on Spotify and Apple Music.