About the Artist

I first started painting in 1986 after being a very keen photographer (why are photographers always described as "keen"?) for more than 20 years and having amassed a very large collection of colour transparencies.

The spur to paint came from seeing a series on Channel 4 featuring the celebrated art forger, Tom Keating.

Each week Keating would produce a pastiche of a work by a well-known artist and one of these pastiches was a variation of a Degas painting in pastel.

I had previously tried to paint with oil pastels but had failed miserably. Tom Keating made it look so easy that I tried it again and found that pastel was a medium that suited me.

I subsequently found that soft pastels were a lot easier to use than oil pastels and after a brief period of experimenting with rendering textures such as wood, metal and glass, I concentrated more and more on painting landscapes.

I now paint in watercolour, pastels, acrylic and alkyds. My choice of medium is largely dictated by the subject matter.
Watercolour is a very difficult medium to master but it is very exciting as a result. Acrylics, once the technical issues such as keeping the paint from drying so quickly have been mastered, provide the ultimate in control over the subject, giving you the option of a major change of direction if you are unhappy with a composition.
Pastels give a richness of texture and colour together with an immediacy which is very satisfying - you don't have to wait for the paint to dry!

I live in Bracknell in Berkshire and have recently retired from a long career in Marketing based in Malvern in Worcestershire.
Initially my landscape subjects were roughly divided between the Malvern area and the Thames Valley although examples of landscapes and cityscapes ranging from Boston and Philadelphia in the USA and France and Sweden can be seen here.

A little bit about myself:

Name: Roderick Martin Jones

Born at an early age in Zimbabwe. (Very early)

Married with two children - well, grown ups really but "married with two grown ups" sounds a little bit perverted doesn't it?

Black Belts in To Fu, Su Doku and Feng Shui

White Belt in Macrame with lacy bits

Member of the Wokingham and District Arts Group which I recently rejoined after a break of ten years.

Previously I was a member of the Worcester Society of Artists for a number of years.

Formal Art Education.

My Art Teacher at school wore a dinner jacket and called me "Sir" - is that formal enough for you?

- Seriously though, who cares whether an artist has had a formal art education or not?
I have met gallery owners who, apart from demanding a 40 per cent commission have insisted that they " only exhibit paintings by members of the Royal Institute of Watercolours" or "artists with suitable qualifications". Although this is obviously a convenient way of avoiding being importuned by the untalented, this is like saying that Beethoven's music is better than it sounds and is plainly daft.

A painting is something that is complete in itself and either appeals to the viewer or it does not. Anyone who needs an artist's resumé before they can tell whether they want to enjoy or buy a painting is clearly missing something.

Hopefully the paintings shown here will tell you more about my qualifications than the following report on my work by one of Britain's leading Art Critics :

"Rod's approach to his work demonstrates a single-minded focus in his manner of using overlays of rich colour to depict still life, land forms and harbour views as a way of presenting a visual reading of his subject which is uniquely informed by his appreciation of the metaphysical pantheon of the cerebral paradigm of the post-modern ethos and imbued with a holistic one-ness of spirit which is sadly all too rare.

Rod shows an engagement with the medium in the manner of the marks which he makes to both underpin the main structure of his paintings and create inner tensions within the framework of the concepts represented by the underlying themes which are held within the fulcrum of the overlayering creative process.

The whole oeuvre is suffused with lighting that is depicted in strong visual terms across the chosen substrate of his work, be it paper, canvas or board, transforming occasionally mundane aspects of everyday life to a theistic embodiment of a higher plane.

His paintings provide the eye with an evanescent heuristic to enable it to encompass and enjoy a strength of recognition of the items depicted which is characteristic of his strongly post-modern approach to the objects depicted within and between the juxtapositions of themas chosen as the amphitheatre of his creative aspirations."

- Sir Stafford Stiffsocks RA

So that's clear, isn't it?

Actually, as you will probably have guessed, this is a spoof but the sad fact is that it is based on a real piece of meaningless art -speak which has merely been taken to a higher level of pretentiousness for comical effect.

By the magic of Google, you can probably find the original by putting "overlays of rich colour to depict" into the search box (complete with the quotation marks) and see what comes up. It is a shame that such a wonderful piece of pretentiousness is let down by the use of "loosing" for "losing" - this lack of attention to detail does tend to devalue the product.

Other interests:

Swimming (one mile every morning at the Bracknell Sports Centre) and playing blues harp at every opportunity.

Deflating pretentiousness and pomposity in all its forms. (See above sample) and click here for a comprehensive guide to business speak and other piffle.

Musical Tastes : Mainly Blues but ranging over all its forms from early US folk blues through soul to Chicago blues and beyond. More about blues