Gabrielle Jones

"This too Shall Pass" 2010

122cm x 122cm 

Oil on canvas

Gabrielle Jones has a series of gorgeous works on display at the Goulburn Regional Gallery. The show is called 'Paint as Landscape' and the works ooze movement and light. I love the way paint is used to capture a fleeting moment, a memory of a sensory perception. Paint is applied generously and in equal measures of thick and thin so that the works breathe. 

I am interested in the slippage between the real and illusion, fast and slow, movement and static; the point in which nature disintegrates or decays (and the decay of the image); the time between light and dark; and nature as a site of flux and impermanence - that is, the transience of the real. - Gabrielle Jones 'Paint as Landscape' 2010 catalogue.

Gabrielle Jones has produced a very strong body of work and it is so gratifying to see this dedicated painter hitting her stride. Do yourself a favour and go see for yourself. The show ends December 4th.

Gabrielle Jones - dialogue with paint

Gabrielle Jones

'Night Storm'
2008, 122 x 152 Oil on Canvas
Image courtesy of the artist

The other day I had the pleasure of visiting Sydney artist Gabrielle Jones in her studio. We had lots to talk about. So much so that on my train trip home I madly scribbled recalled snippets of our conversation, covering three blank end pages of my current read - Night Studio: a memoir of Philip Guston.

A natural colourist, Jones' abstracted landscapes are taken from memories of shape and space in nature. She is an interesting mixture of an intuitive painter and one that makes considered decisions about how colour and form should combine. These paintings offer her own unique view of the Australian bush in all it's extremes -hot and sun drenched; dry, restful, cooling shade.

Jones related to me an early lesson she learnt at art school which was to allow a painting to take her where it wants to go. Clearly it's a lesson that works for her style and her painting process. Although periodically she draws from life, her main sustenance for subject comes from her memory. The main work in each painting comes from decisions she makes as the work grows before her ( each work springs from one primary painting and so there is a constantly active process of looking and re imagining). It's about the conversations she has with herself and the painting materials - canvas, brushes, paint - that seem to concern her most.

Jones seems to revel in formal elements such as the ambiguity of a shape. Also, space as a counter point to shape, is just as important. Her use of white might be something to do with this nuance and, to my mind, helps to tie her surfaces together so that they feel both weighty and light all at the same time. There is a meatiness to her paint too which I really like and we spoke for a long time about the way the edges - the spaces between two shapes or the meeting of two tones of colour - can keep a painting buzzing with tension or, in the case of some of her identified 'failures', leave a painting feeling predictable and deadened.

"Of course, I'm still learning to paint" she maintains. From this statement I get that Jones is willing to push paint around, ask it questions and grow as an artist in that process. Gabrielle Jones is a painter who knows her stuff and can speak the language of paint with real insight. Visit her website and her blog too where you will find her interesting ruminations about art and life as well as a wonderful collection of quotes from other artists.

Gabrielle Jones has an upcoming show: "Trees for my Father" depot II Gallery, 2 Danks St Waterloo Nov 3 -15 Drinks with the artist Wed Nov 4 6-8pm