Peter Jones, a versatile artist and painter, adept and exploratory across many different media.
Peter Jones paints in turns vibrant and funny as well as dark and intense.
Some paintings wildly expressionistic with explosive use of colour.
Pastoral landscapes transformed into semi-abstract luminous volumes within a cauldron of anti-realist colouring.
Abstract works of Peter Jones explore a tightrope between balance/control and disequilibrium.
Peter Jones draws with lively, quirky lines 'to the point', able to capture the essence of a scene with a few concentrated lines.
Peter Jones imbues the ordinary, the ordinarily disregarded, even the drab, with its due significance.
Peter Jones manages to portray industrial scenes, road building work, agricultural structures, cars, road signs, telegraph and electricity wires, as well as aeroplanes with an emotional punch, revealing attitudes towards this underbelly of our culture for future generations.
The art of Peter Jones will be a record of 'the way things were once upon a time'.
What is Art ?
(a response to the inconsistencies of criticism)
A work of art, it seems to me, is basically something physical, inspired by an emotional impulse. It is personal, self sufficient and, though primarily made for the needs of its creator, available to all.
Feelings give birth to the work of art and afterwards the response of the viewer will be affected by the viewer's own feelings. Ultimately the work can only be judged by feeling and not analysis.
Unfortunately technique is the easiest thing to respond to and is often used as a yardstick for judgment.
Meanings too, although part of a work of art, are only the starting point; the value of the work lies in its complex whole.
All of which suggests to me that both access to and assessment of a work of art can come only through familiarity and sympathy.
Peter Jones 22-1-97