PERSONAL PROFILE
Jane Jones is a Denver native who discovered very early in
life, through crayons, that she loved color.
Rarely seen without her crayons or watercolors, by the time she was seven
she had already begun to separate her crayons into cool colors and what she
called “citrus” or warm colors. She
wrote stories and illustrated them and created “film strips” on paper using
her 72 Crayola colors. Now she says
that she lives for color and light, “that’s the reason that I get out of bed
in the morning.”
A detour through biology and chemistry earned her a
Bachelor of Science degree in 1976. “Looking
into the lives of cells, plants and animals gave me a glimpse into the awesome
power of living things and an incredible respect for them.”
After graduating from art school in 1989, she spent
several years honing her techniques and searching for her artistic vision and
voice. Jones knew that she loved
color, that she was drawn to the personal intimacy of still life and that she
loved the beauty of nature.
One day while playing with a new close-up lens on her
camera she decided to investigate some flowers.
“I saw a whole new and incredibly beautiful world of shape and
movement, sort of like looking into a microscope.”
That began a whole new artistic journey into painting the amazing world
of flowers. For several years she
filled large canvases with the magnified close-up images of flowers.
But the time came a few years ago to “put the flowers in vases and
begin using symbolism to create more meaningful images” that would satisfy her
spiritual exploration.
Gardening is the genesis for many of her paintings.
She has found a profound satisfaction from finding bulbs, seeds and
plants in catalogues and greenhouses and then nurturing them to full flower.
“One of the toughest things that I have to do is cutting the flowers
from the plant. But once I get just
the right light on them and the glass vase - well, I’m beside myself with
excitement at the possibility of translating it into paint.”
Outside of the windows of her Arvada, Colorado studio is her garden which
produces many of the roses, lilies, irises and tulips that she paints.
And she has a great relationship with her florist.
But commercial flowers are often too uniform, so whenever she can, Jones
travels to gardens to gather information about more types of flowers and see
them in their various stages of development.
Her travels have taken her to such diverse areas as public and private
gardens in Southern California, the Desert Botanic Gardens in Arizona, exotic
and tropical gardens in Florida and to the fabulous tulip and bulb gardens and
markets in Holland.