jeffrey jones

Art by Jeffrey Jones.

Nous avons tous nos artistes favoris, et souvent en avons-nous bien trop pour les nommer tous, et les apprécions-nous de tant de façons différentes qu'il est inutile de chercher à les ranger dans un ordre quelconque. Mais parmi ceux-là, certains nous ouvrent les yeux davantage que d'autres. Jeffrey Jones est de ces illustrateurs qui ont été une révélation pour moi, et celui qui m'a donné envie de peindre à l'huile.
En France, où l'huile a été remise au goût du jour par François Roca, dont il y a pourtant beaucoup à dire, les images enlevées, au pinceau riche, de Jones rompent avec la manie du propre initiée par Roca, ce lisse absolu et maniaque qui gangrène l'illustration jeunesse. Nos illustrateurs "réalistes" peignent peut-être mille fois plus propre que Goya, Velazquez, Sargent, Degas et Waterhouse réunis, mais à quoi bon?

Pour se faire une idée du travail de Jones, UnderWood Books a publié deux beaux ouvrages, The Art of Jeffrey Jones, ainsi que Age of Innocence : The Romantic Art of Jeffrey Jones, mais ce dernier, le plus beau selon moi, est semble-t-il épuisé. Le plus récent Sketchbook publié aux éditions Vanguard est un magnifique recueil de croquis réunis au fil d'une conversation passionnante entre Jones et George Pratt, autre fantastique peintre américain.
Vous pouvez d'ores et déjà vous rendre sur le site de Jeffrey Jones, sorte de sympathique bazar dans lequel l'on finit toujours par trouver des choses qu'on n'avait pas encore vues.

Jeffrey Jones

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Caveman detail, by Jeffrey Jones.

We all have favorite artists, and we often like too many of them to count and make lists of the ones we love the most. But, even among a hundred favorite painters, few still mean something special to us, in the way they opened our eyes to new pictorial languages. Jeffrey Jones is a very special one among my favorite artists, an epiphany of my life, to say in his own words. His work made me fond of oil paints as a medium, and in France, where the new "oil painting revival" for illustrations was launched by François Roca and his followers, that meant a very new approach of that medium to me. Roca is the still unpunished master of copying the old masters (Remington, Pyle, Wyeth, Waterhouse...) and modern masters (Phil Hale, Scott Gustafson...), but he does it in an as technically brilliant as incredibly dull way. I suspect our new realism-in-oil illustrators to be dangerously obsessed with smooth and clean work, so clean, and over-brushed, over-melted brush-strokes that I would almost regret old airbrush paintings. Perhaps their work is a thousand times more clean and smooth than Goya's, Velazquez', Degas', Sargent's, Waterhouse's put together, but it still seems incredibly boring to me. I'd like to see more accidents and bravura.

If you want to see some of Jones' work, you can check two beautiful art books, published by UnderWood : The Art of Jeffrey Jones and Age of Innocence : the Romantic Art of Jeffrey Jones. I prefer the latter, but I'm afraid it is out of print. His Sketchbook, by Vanguard publishers, is one of the finest books I have in my collection, rich of hundreds of black & white sketches, along with a fascinating conversation between Jones and George Pratt. Reading this book could easily spare two years of poor art instruction. You can also have a look at his website, a funny mess of drawings and thoughts, where you'll sure find some treasures every time you'll check it.

Jeffrey Jones