Gloria Sanchez Jackson was born in Sacramento. She attended local Catholic schools and CSUS, where she obtained her BA and MA degrees in studio art. She had two occupations for most of her adult life--her art career and her job at the Senate Rules Committee. She was dedicated to her work, and she took it very seriously. Answering a radio interviewer who asked her how long it took to make a painting, she replied that it required her entire life to make paintings, that everything she was went into the work.

In a 2002 Artweek review David M. Roth wrote of her work, “For a decade or so, she has been making elegant, elegiac, abstract paintings that plumb the subconscious, unearthing biomorphic images of riveting beauty that are now beginning to look a lot like memorials.” The elegiac feeling is strong in her work particularly since 1995, when she learned she had cancer. But despite the surgeries and chemotherapy and medications she continued to make art. As she said in an artist statement about her painting “Requiem”, the painting's purpose was to speak about the loss of all human life, whether through illness or terrorism. In “Requiem”, which is dedicated to those who died in the attacks of September 11, there is the glowing radiance that is in many of her other paintings, where light and energy permeate the dark surfaces.

Gloria Sanchez Jackson's career included twelve solo exhibitions and sixty-four group shows, as well as thirteen awards.ÿ She continued to paint, making cyanotypes and works on paper until shortly before her death in June of last year.