Welcome to Catherine Jones Art, where you can find out about me and view my available art. As well as an artist I am also a musician and writer and some of my work incorporates more than one aspect of my creative work.
Artist Support Pledge
I am a member of artist support pledge so upon selling £1000 worth of art I am committed to buying £200/worth from other artists.
I’ve been obsessed with art for as long as I can remember. My parents chose my first nursery school because they did lots of art there, and then at kindergarten I spent almost all of my time painting and gluing.
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I was thrilled by Van Gogh’s boots at the Hayward Gallery much to everyone’s amusement, and exhibited for the first time at the Ben Uri Art Gallery, in London, at the age of 4. As a teenager I co-ordinated my class a number of times to create massive tissue paper stained glass windows for Founders Day, and the art staff were very keen I should go to art school which wasn’t encouraged at home. I won the art prize, and chose Robert Hughes’ “The Shock of the New”, still one of my prize possessions.​
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I studied music at university, but carried on art making, taking classes and workshops whenever I could, and designing posters and painting sets at college. It would never quite leave me alone… Then life got in the way…
Finally, I took some classes when my children were at primary school and the tutors kept telling me to go to college. With their encouragement I did, first being awarded distinctions in all aspects of my access course to art and design and then a distinction for my Masters in Fine Art at the University of Gloucestershire.
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​There I focused on installation and performance art, including events and happenings, cooking, music and dance, performing poetry, and getting audiences to become truly involved. I also experimented with ceramics, wood cuts and using found objects, as well as creating rituals and sound recordings.
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​Since then I've run art classes for adults and children, and participated many times with an artists and writers group based in the West Midlands, art\write, exhibited locally in Stroud, where I am a member of the Stroud Artists Cooperative, and Dursley, and the north Cotswolds, created a community play performed at the Dursley Festival and performed at Wantage Literary Festival.
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I’ve also exhibited in Bristol, at Nook, in a group show, and one of my paintings was used to advertise the Royal West of England Academy summer art activities programme.​ I've collaborated in PoArtry at General Office (GO), Stourbridge and in a number of group shows. Over lockdown I was a member of The Drawbridge, a social media art group set up by a friend in Stourbridge, and we held an exhibition at GO of our lockdown work in 2021.
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I love working with children, and have been artist in residence at primary schools in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, which have been truly joyous experiences.
Since March 2020 I've used much of my time to work on exploring the psychogeography of place - places I've explored locally which are quiet and remote, camping in private woodland on the Shropshire/Welsh border, and the views from my patio watching the changing Gloucestershire seasons.
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I am also fascinated by the conversations that take place when a still life is created, and the relationship between the painting and the actual objects.
I am a keen walker and outdoors person, always happy to set up my easel, my tent for sleep and my swimming things for a quick wild swim. There is nothing better than a day walking, stopping to sketch, take photographs and sit and ponder the sights and sounds of open space.
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I am obsessed with colour. Colour creates an emotional response, in my mind and heart. I try to capture my synesthetic response to place, to the mood and feeling, the history and my instinctive reactions in my work.
I paint mainly with acrylics, (sadly I am severely allergic to all forms of oil paint) but also use mixed media, gouache and watercolours and printing and always have a little box of various pencils, graphite sticks and watercolour pencils so I can create a quick response to what I observe.
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More recently I set up 30 (now 30+) days of doodling on Facebook, to encourage everyone to have a go at drawing without fear. Please do join (@30+daysofdoodling)
