20 Ivan Maxwell Jones

Painter

Artform: Mixed media, Painting

My passion for painting and my love of nature are intimately connected. I love to get out into the landscape in all weathers and soak up the sights, sounds and atmosphere of the natural world. I am particularly inspired by the light, colours and textures of the Malvern Hills, which are close to my home and my heart.

I paint mainly from my home studio using the sketches and photographs that I gather in my frequent hills walks. Each painting is an individual voyage of discovery for me and I try to see my surroundings in fresh way, to evoke a sense of character in the landscape and express the wonder I experience in the everyday.

Sometimes my work has a heightened realism, other times my landscapes are abstracted through colour, form and texture. I try to bring energy, movement and drama into my work through a vigorous painting process: by building up layers of paint using brushes, palette knifes, spattering, rubbing back, scratching and scraping away to create a textural surface with depth and history.

My Abstract paintings are just as important to me and provide a compliment to my more objective work. At first glance it may appear that my art has two distinct characters, but while ostensibly my abstract paintings and my landscapes appear quite different, each inspires and informs the other. I tend to view the landscape through a prism of abstract composition, while I regularly discover mountains and landscape features emerging unbidden in my abstract works. My experimental approach to painting, through exploring thrown, scraped, dripped and spattered mark-making and my passion for colour, texture and composition are common threads that run through all my work.

When painting abstracts I often work in an intuitive and gestural way, burying and unearthing marks, colours and textures, revealing glimpses of hidden colours in a highly layered surface. Sometimes these incorporate elements of collage and printing within the textured surface; I like to see where the mood takes me rather than developing a ‘house style’ and sticking to it.

Whether representational or purely abstract, my experimental approach to painting aims to find the sweet-spot between chaos and control, where mistakes are discoveries and a painting emerges through creative play.

With a Drama degree from Bristol Uni, and a previous career as a television editor making natural history programmes for BBC Bristol, my route to becoming a fine artist has been an unconventional one. Re-discovering my love of fine art about 18 years ago (via stained-glass making), I trained at the Bristol School of Art and then spent 10 years as an Art Teacher, after moving to Malvern in 2008. These days I share my time between painting and art tuition.

Venue

Malvern Cube, Community Centre,
Albert Rd N, Great Malvern,
WR14 2YF Malvern
United Kingdom
Directions: Conveniently located in the heart of Great Malvern. Visitor car parking is available behind the Main Building. There is also free parking available on the street

What 3 words location: owls.banks.builds

Tel: 07465 404874
Instagram: imaxjones
Facebook: imaxjones
Website: http://www.ivanmjones.com

Added extras:
Access for wheelchair users
Refreshments
Toilets

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