Jackowsi was born in a Polish hospital in North Wales. For the next eleven years he lived with his parents in a camp for refugees near Crewe. He explains: "The huts in the camp were made of wood covered in tar. My parents carried a card saying they were aliens. One of my first memories is of being at a table and turning black pages of stamp albums with glowing images of cities, trees, animals, mountains, aeroplanes and people. Some years later my half-sister who had been left in Poland, when my father escaped to Hungary, came to visit. My father gave her the stamp albums. When I was eleven years old we moved to London and lived for a while with my half-brother who was a photographer. When I was about fourteen my parents separated. About the same time I painted a self-portrait and decided to become a painter.