‘On Painting’

My paintings are concerned with the conventions of the portrait and of the landscape. The sources for my work are primarily my own photographs, though I do occasionally use a found image from a magazine, a film or a newspaper. I plan for a lot more paintings than I actually make.

The planning involves gridding over a black and white photocopy of a photograph as a means to determine the scale and edge of the painting. I sometimes do a small gouache study to help me work out the palette and if I am fairly certain a particular photograph is to be transcribed onto canvas, I will make a study of the figure in black oil paint on draft tracing paper in order to scale it precisely onto the canvas.

Any one of the paintings I am working on will influence which images I choose for new works. This might be because I want to carry on a theme to do with a narrative, or because a combination of colours has come up I can apply to a new work, or that I’ve found a way of applying paint that needs to be explored further in a new painting.

My painting style I hope is always developing and I look at other painter’s work a lot; historical, modern and contemporary, I love to do this and of course it feeds my own practice. I look at paintings from the National Gallery, commercial galleries or a student degree show. These viewings will invariably throw up something exciting for me. I have an ongoing internal dialogue with  a wide range of painters work. It’s a complex process and I aim for clarity. I want my paintings to be generous and to engage the viewer.

Mark Jones

June 2009

Adobe             Word

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