Sacred enamel and latex on acrylic 10″x8″ 2009
Precious enamel and latex on acrylic 10″x8″ 2009
Jeffrey Cortland Jones: Recent Paintings, September 10 – October 31, 2009 @ some walls . Oakland . California .
Long known for his use of industrial materials, various kinds of paint, institutional colors, and a complex layering of transparent and opaque paint akin to glazing, Jeffrey Cortland Jones had gradually shifted towards a brilliant, vibrant palette, and a vigorous, painterly, graffiti-like approach to mark-making. Recently, however, he returned to his former more subdued color set, and radically reduced and refined the materials used in order to make a large and continuing series of new small paintings, each enamel on 10 x 8 inch acrylic panels. The resulting flat fields, smeared strokes, close contrast, and horizontal divisions, while appearing initially and deceptively simpler than previous work, are confidently abstract, visually evocative and associative, and, despite their size, surprisingly monumental.
In this new work Jones’ painting is quick, soft, flat, and deft. The speed at which Jones makes and completes each painting is rapid and decisive, without hesitation and worry. The four paintings exhibited at Some Walls, all basically green and white, evidence play with paint and ground. Surprisingly, for such small work, the paint is often rapidly applied with large brushes, spread, smoothed, or scrubbed, and sometimes wiped and buffed to expose the clear acrylic ground. In areas where no paint appears on the front, the backside of the acrylic is often painted, adding depth to the frontal plane and changing the color of the side of the panel. The edges and corners of each panel’s front are handled differently: fully covered with paint; or exposed by strokes that pull away from the edge; or built up where a dragged brush spills paint over the edge to form a small lip. When hung, small spacers on the back of each panel push them off the wall one eighth inch or so, adding depth and heft. These small differences, immense to a painter, become significant to the carefully observant viewer. The resulting paintings, intentionally created objects, have a sensitive, physical presence, and are containers of human activity, seeing, and thinking; their presence is a sign of recognition and resolution.
Jones’ approach—the large strokes, the broad effects, working with and incorporating the surface—make the paintings feel larger than they are. Because the objects are painted and physical, and despite a photographic quality, in terms of size and surface, it’s possible to feel that not only one is looking at an image, but that one is also a part of or inside the image. Size is one thing, and scale quite another. Looking at a painting, feeling our body in relation to the object, is one sense of scale, but being inside the image is something else, a more psychological and emotional experience. A shift from seeing size to experiencing scale is why these paintings feel monumental; this is difficult to achieve, especially in a kind of abstract painting where no other form, line, or spatial devices tells the viewer the scale of the image being viewed.
Associative aspects of paintings are useful ways of describing visual and emotional experience. In these paintings the vertical format, horizontal divisions, and cool color hint at the wintery-like atmospherics of haze over a landscape just as the sun is about to burst through. This feeling of faintly seeing into a distance, of wanting to see what is beyond the haze, and the effect of light and atmosphere, is a kind of abstraction, a covering over, of preventing our looking for and latching onto something “real.” It is time-based, keeping us present, watching, and wondering. Although each painting can stand absolutely and successfully alone, as installed here a few inches apart in a single row these paintings interact, like four views of the same place within minutes of each other, almost a time lapse sequence. This is one example of the narrative possibility of a abstract painting, however nonlinear and pre-lingual that narrative may be. But there is little outside of these paintings that can help us understand them more. Our understanding remains in the experience of looking.
In a recent essay, Matthew Collings commented about an exhibition of Robert Motherwell’s “Open,” series of paintings, “I like the way the ‘Opens’ simply refuse any possibility of looking up things in books,[1]” meaning, I take it, that the paintings are intensely visual and abstract, with no other agenda than painting, and are only accessible through observation and interaction. One has nowhere else to turn to figure them out. What Collings admires in Motherwell applies to Jones—the painting is itself.
Jones says, “This work is honestly only about the painting: how its applied; how is sits on the surface; how most of it is matte but then a few moments of gloss hang around the edges; the shift from a cool white to a warm white; its relationship to the wall; what happens with the space between the painting and the wall; etc.[2]” In an excerpt from a recent statement, he tells us, “Painting is simply obsessive, correcting, locating, apprehending, pigment, fog, field, continuous, resistance, painting.[3]” Jones confirms that his making paintings becomes for the viewer a process of participating, observing, and paying attention.
Chris Ashley
Oakland, California
September, 2009
[1] Collings, Matthew.”The Known Unknowns” Modern Painters. London. September 2009. Pages 24-26
[2] Email from the artist to the author, August 25, 2009.
[3] Email from the artist to the author, August 20, 2009.
Perspectives in Abstraction touches on the tireless topic of Abstraction’s universality in art and gathers three regional painters to participate in the conversation. Kim Krause’s reflections on the characters of Pandora and Sybil from Greek Myth deploy a vocabulary of radiant white plumes, polka dotted baubles, spinning colorful rings and fluttery pages that consider the archetypal qualities rather than the specifics of the subjects he references. Frank Hermann’s Asmat paintings are behemoths with ropey textures in acrylic that form into anthropological studies and mysterious mounds. Running between these two local heroes of paintings is a quiet cloudbank of enamel works on acrylic surfaces by Jeffrey Cortland Jones. White and nearly white fields of color modulate across a series of small paintings with the most surprising moments of bright color reflecting from the backsides of more than one piece. With three distinct approaches to form and color — from crowded to discreet, sleek to roughly physical — we’re given plenty to see and compare. 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Friday through Sept. 25.
8″ x 10″ enamel on acrylic panel
August 7th – 29th, 2009
Opening Reception August 7th, 6-11pm
Mt. Comfort (a space for champions) is pleased to present, 3 color paints whole world, an exhibition of new paintings by Ohio based artist Jeffrey Cortland Jones. Jones small scale, abstract paintings court both painterly and minimal aesthetic concerns, all the while keeping material and process at the center of his practice. The paintings resonate with dualities, “chance happenings and a fusion of formal opposites: geometric vs. organic, spontaneous vs. controlled.”
Jones paintings have been included in many national and international exhibitions. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Dayton. He received his MFA from the University of Cincinnati.
Come join us for the IDADA First Friday Art Tour.
For more information on the artist, visit the following:
http://jeffreycortlandjones.wordpress.com
Mt. Comfort (a space for champions)
1651 English Ave.
(corner of State and English)
Indianapolis, Indiana
http://mtcomfort.blogspot.com
(317) 522-6857
Atlanta, GA
December 2009
309 Peters St
Atlanta, GA 30313
Atlanta, GA 30313
Brooklyn, NY
February 2010
303 Grand St.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Los Angeles, CA
April 2010
2737 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90039
Los Angeles, CA 90039
Saint Louis, MO
April 2010
2028 S. 12th St
Saint Louis, MO 63104
Pocket Utopia presents “Business Edition,” Thurs., July 16th @ 6pm – a one-night exhibition of artist-produced editions and prints
1037 Flushing Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11237
8″ x 10″ enamel and latex on acrylic
