Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts
Spring, Texas
pearlmfa.org
Through May 14, 2022
It’s long, but the title of a new solo exhibition at Texas’s Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts says it all — “Cultivating the Dutch Tradition in the 21st Century: Jane Jones’s Hyperrealist Floral Paintings.” On view soon will be 25 still lifes this talented artist has painted since 2012.
Well before she published the book Classic Still Life Painting in 2004, Jones admired the great 17th-century Dutch floral painters, including women such as Maria van Oosterwyck, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Rachel Ruysch. She brings to this timeless genre a decidedly contemporary approach informed by both the precision of photorealism and the bright, clear light of the Denver area, where Jones was born and still resides.
In her work, the artist banishes extraneous details in order to focus on the elegance of flowers, juxtaposing their organic forms with the geometric rigidity of their vases, of the stones she sometimes includes, and even of the square or rectangular canvas itself. Unlike the average photorealist, Jones channels her Old Masterly forerunners by applying the many layers of glazing that make the scenes glow.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Jones earned degrees in both art history and biology. She notes that her scientific familiarity with cells, plants, animals, and ecosystems gave her “a glimpse into the awesome power of living things and an incredible respect for them,” as well as an appreciation of the “importance of precision when observing nature.” The resulting paintings highlight the “everyday triumphs of nature” and the “power, beauty, and fragility of life, none of which” — she emphasizes— “should ever be taken for granted.”
Jones’s art also incorporates symbolism, which, she explains, “has become more pointed and direct over time. This exhibition presents paintings with the ideas of risk and protection but goes further to express my concern about changes to, and destruction of, this planet due to climate change.”
Curated and organized by scholar David J. Wagner, the exhibition will move on from suburban Houston to:
- Dane G. Hansen Memorial Museum in Logan, Kansas (May 27–July 17, 2022)
- Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina (August 15–November 15, 2022)
- Chicago’s Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (January 21–April 21, 2023)
- Holland Museum in Holland, Michigan (May 5– July 2, 2023)
- Evelyn Burrow Museum in Hanceville, Alabama (August 1– October 31, 2023)
Check the tour’s latest schedule at janejonesartist.com.
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