Western Morning News (Saturday)
Jean Jones exhibition at Brownston Gallery
FOLLOWING last Autumn’s landmark retrospective of the recently rediscovered artist Jean Jones (19272012), the Jean Jones Estate is proud to announce the launch of its second exhibition at The Brownston Gallery, Devon – “Jean Jones: A Life Uncovered”.
Jean Jones was a British figurative painter who achieved substantial success in the London and Oxford art worlds of the 1970s, culminating in a prestigious solo exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum in 1980. Her work engages varyingly with the legacies of expressionism and postimpressionism, serving as a “diary” through which she was able to document her shifting perceptions of the world across five decades.
The notable dealer and connoisseur David Carritt commended the “poetic” and “lyrical” qualities of her paintings, whilst the novelist Iris Murdoch went so far as to predict that Jones would one day be as famous as her great idol, Van Gogh. As it would happen however, Jones would never reach the great heights she had once promised; her career as a selling and exhibiting artist tragically curtailed by the deterioration of her long standing struggle with severe mental illness. It was painting – practised as a daily ritual – that ultimately saved her.
“Jean Jones: A Life Uncovered” will delve deeper into the complex story of the woman behind the canvas.
The exhibition will commence on Saturday, May 8 at The Brownston Gallery, followed by an exclusive talk from Michael Kurtz – one of the curators at the Estate – on Wednesday, May 19.
For more information visit www.brownstonart.com.