Meet D.r. Jones

We were lucky to catch up with D.r. Jones recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have D.r. with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

Pablo Picasso once said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working”. A person may have a great talent, but with out putting brush to canvas or pen to paper or expression to your voice, nothing will be created. For me, creation does not come easy. I get in the studio every day. Maybe I just start by cleaning brushes. Maybe I spend time on the Internet studying an artist whose work I admire. But, eventually, I start making marks on the canvas and then the work directs me how to proceed.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

My art practice focuses on story telling. Georgia O’Keefe, the iconic Southwest artist, once said “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for”. Each painting I do is an attempt to share a feeling or tell a story using color and form instead of words.

Most of my work now is portraits, portraits of people famous or otherwise. When I paint a celebrity, I try to represent the attributes that made them good at what they do. Even when portraying someone I don’t know, I imagine a backstory for them and try to incorporate that into the painting. If I can get the viewer to have a non-verbal interaction with the person that they are seeing, then I’ve succeeded.

My current work uses a reduced, almost monochromatic, palette for more emotional impact. The series is called “Cutting Through the Static”. These portraits look kind of scratchy and ill-defined; a metaphor for these times where social media static fills our days and truth is only a fluid, situational concept. It’s as if the subject is coming into view on an old-school static-filled TV. (Ask your parents…)

The title of the series is from a song by State Champs.
“If only we could wait for the truth
When, you know, it’s not so dramatic
Let’s cut through the static”

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

For this article, I was asked to list three qualities or skills that affected my artistic journey. So, I would say 1) have some aptitude for what you want to do, 2) study the work of others who you think do it well and 3) (and this is, really, the only one that matters) just do it, as Nike would say. And keep doing it. Even if you’re not very good at first. When I first started painting, I wasn’t very good. But I wanted to be able to tell a story through art. So I kept working and I got better.

Many years ago, a group of high school students contacted several of their favorite authors asking for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond. Here is part of what he said:

“Practice any art; music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

The person that most impacted my art practice, I never even met. As a child, my family took many trips to New Mexico. Each trip would end with a stop over in Santa Fe. It was on one of these trips that I first saw the work of John Nieto. His bold, Expressionistic works inform my art work to this day. Since then, I’ve moved on to pursue my own artistic direction. But I still feel Nieto’s influence as I’m creating my own works.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://red-hand-art.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/d.r.jones_art/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dennis.jones.31586/