Matt Jones
Matt Jones
Matt Jones
Citing medieval illumination and dream visions, rococo art, and the global climate crisis, Matt Jones (b. 1980, Rochester NY) engages ideas of intimacy, domesticity, and community in his ambitious colored pencil drawings and paintings.
The very face of the sky
2020 Colored pencil on Stonehenge natural paper 55.88 x 76.20 cm / 22 x 30 in
‘For the last eight months I’ve been working exclusively with colored pencil on paper at one end of a lab table in my apartment, with my partner teaching at the other end, and our greyhound sleeping nearby. The onset of the pandemic necessarily changed my practice. In material and emotional terms there was no possibility to maintain “business as usual” as an oil painter. The references in these drawings have become simultaneously more local (old growth forest, the impacts of climate change and the pandemic, a longing for friends and family, drug and alcohol addiction) and more mythical (medieval illumination, Rococo painting, open world gaming, folklore).’—Matt Jones
The beginning of a story
2020 Colored pencil on Stonehenge natural paper 55.88 x 76.20 cm / 22 x 30 in
The amazing ability to forget
2020 Colored pencil on Stonehenge natural paper 55.88 x 76.20 cm / 22 x 30 in
Joachim Pissarro on Matt Jones’s work
Joachim Pissarro: Jones’s works completely reinvent the wheel with color pencil as a medium so that it becomes (to my eye, at least) almost impossible to differentiate between the subtlest caresses of the pencil, and the bombastic over-layered insistence of his crayon crushing on the surfaces.
Hunter MFA
The annual Spring 2020 Thesis Exhibition for graduates of the Hunter College MFA Studio Art program represents works by 19 artist graduates of this nationally noted program. Originally planned as a series of physical presentations at Hunter’s 205 Hudson Street campus in Tribeca, but canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the MFA Thesis Exhibition’s digital iteration aims to provide a new, expanded platform for young artists entering the field.