One of thirteen children of John Beardy and Dinah Monias, Jackson lived with his maternal grandparents with the expectation that he would learn and pass on the spiritual traditions of his nation.
Jackson grew up at a time when native children were sent off to residential schools. When he was seven he was taken from his home and spent the remainder of his youth at the Portage LaPrairie Indian School west of Winnipeg. On graduating he studied commercial art at the Winnipeg Vocational School in 1963/64 and later also took art courses at the University of Manitoba. He worked for a time in the display department of Simpson Sears Winnipeg store.
Jackson Beardy had a distinctive graphic style characterized by flat areas of warm colours and curving ribbons of paint. His early work often narrated legends but as his art and his vision matured he explored the natural balances in nature, regeneration and growth, and the interdependence of all things. Some works were rendered on birchbark or beaver skins rather than canvas.
