Paper and Wood – Collecting Ideas

Figure #2 – the winning entry in the Brett Whitely Travelling Art Scholarship – 2004.

Contemporary visual artist Alan Jones embraces diversity using an equally diverse range of media, including drawing, painting, photography and sculpture. He seeks to illustrate the “intricacies of human connection” with works that include self and family portraits, along with images that connect him with his, and our, British and colonial past. As part of this process, he’s recently visited England to trace back the roots of an ancestor who arrived on the first fleet.

Alan’s next exhibition in Australia is Paper and Wood – Collecting Ideas which opens at Maitland Regional Art Gallery on Saturday 14 December. The exhibition is a rare insight into how Alan explores his ideas and renders his subjects before approaching the final work.

You’ll be able to view work from Alan’s personal archive covering the late 1990s to the present. While it primarily focuses on his works on paper, it also features photography, sketches and sculptures, and several of his major works.

Alan Jones has exhibited in over 100 group shows and 20 solo exhibitions since 1999. His many awards and grants include the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award in 2011 and Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship in 2004 – Figure #2 (seen here) was his winning entry in the latter. This work, and Alan’s preliminary drawings of Figure #2, are part of the focus exhibition at Maitland Regional Art Gallery. His portrait of arts patron Pat Corrigan is on show as a finalist in the 2013 Archibald Prize Regional Tour.

Paper and Wood – Collecting Ideas
Exhibition: 13 December 2013 – 23 February 2014
Opening: Saturday, 14 December 2013, 3-5pm
Maitland Regional Art Gallery
230 High Street
Maitland, NSW, 2320
Tel: 02 4934 9859
www.mrag.org.au