Robert C. Jones, Seattle, WA, painting

For more than forty years, Robert C. Jones has pursued an expressionistic vision using paint on canvas. "In seeking something beautiful that I have not seen before, I work within the traditional visual concerns of the painter: color, light, line and space," he says. Jones started out drawing and painting from the landscape, still life and figure, but found greater inspiration charting the imaginative territories of his mind's eye. "Now, with random spots and lines, I create a chaos from which I construct a visual order. This may or may not result in recognizable shapes and forms. As a friend recently observed, I have not so much abstracted the subject as extracted the narrative." Throughout Jones's body of abstract work, the color black assumes a virtuoso role. In thick bars or thin curving lines, it boldly orchestrates the pictorial space, dividing the canvas into zones of vivid coloration. The artist displays a fondness for the lush pastels found in Impressionist paintings as well as Impressionism's style of dabbing on layers of small brushmarks. In Jones's work, these surfaces resemble a joyous explosion of petals or multi-colored confetti. "I hope in their integrity and beauty my paintings convey a sense of immediacy, adventure, discomfort, and love of life," he says. Jones is an Emeritis Professor of Art at University of Washington, Seattle, where he taught drawing and painting from 1960 to 1995.

Francine Seders Gallery, 6701 Greenwood Avenue, Seattle, WA 98103

Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle, WA, Solo Exhibition, June 2005

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