Robert Jones

The depiction of the sea in its endless ever-changing state of flux, and the fleeting effects of light and weather on the water are recurrent themes in the work of painter Robert Jones. He is a native Cornishman and has lived by the sea all his life. Working as a fisherman for a number of years, taking his own boat out into the rough Atlantic waters off the North Cornish coast, Jones can certainly claim to know his subject more intimately than most.

His work is based on long-held traditions of the observation of nature, and the subjects he tackles are all part of his own experience. Whatever Robert is painting, be it sea or sky, a tree or a gorse hedge, he is sensitive to the life force which surges through every living thing, and also through himself as the painter.

Transience, growth and change attract him, and he prefers to paint things which will not remain the same for long. Because the changes in what he observes are so swift he is forced to work at top speed, by instinct. He pushes the paint around with tremendous vigour, often deliberately destroying what he has done and reworking the image until it has achieved a cruder, more childlike state, but ultimately one which is rendered more dynamic and powerful in its rawness. Robert believes that when people experience a positive response to painting it is induced not by subject matter alone but also by the energy and enthusiasm of the painter contained in the work.