I
always loved to paint; painting of any kind.
When I was little, my grandfather and I painted
fences, boxes and anything else we could find
that needed a good coat of paint. One year while
I was going to college, I painted houses on
weekends. When I had little kids, and my only
available paints were house paints, I painted
pictures with house paints on
boards.
My
parents, grandparents and great-grandparents
periodically painted pictures, and my mom
painted steadily, so it was easy for me to
follow along. I studied painting a little in
college, but I got serious about painting
regularly in 1987 after taking a workshop from
Bill Kucha and studying with Doug Haga and my
mother, Virginia Jones, all on the Oregon coast.
Mom and I still paint together whenever we can,
and enjoy critiquing each others work over a
glass of wine. I started putting out a lot more
quantity of paintings after courses from Arne
Westerman in Portland, Oregon in 1998, and Steve
Memering in Carmichael, California in 2000.
My
objective is to produce picture poems or
stories, not decorations. People tend to make
scenes interesting, evoking stories, so I put
people or things that relate closely to people
in most of my paintings. I love trying to
capture a human gesture, especially when it
takes just the right line to do it, and
especially when expressive hands and faces are
involved. And I love the ocean -- I like to
paint seascapes with different looks than you
usually get.
I love
Rembrandt and Edouard Vuilliard for lights and
darks; Edward Hopper, Valentin Serov, Vermeer
and Goya for the ways they show people;
traditional Chinese watercolors and Japanese
wood block prints for style and balance; Picasso
and the Haida indian artists of the northwest
for beautiful lines. And I enjoy Rene Magritte,
Norman Rockwell and my mother for their fine
sense of visual humor.
After
thirty plus years in the San Francisco Bay Area,
working primarily in financial and software
businesses, my wife and I moved to the Mendocino
coast of Northern California in September 2000
where I am now very happy that I can paint and
draw full time.
Bruce
Jones
PO Box
250
Gualala, CA 95445
707-884-3381
or
e-mail
to:bsjones@mcn.org
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