2628.As it often occurrs, you only recognize some shaping influences after they've passed you by. It's the way of life, it seems
This last week, the renowned fantasy artist Jeffrey Catherine Jones passed away, and since the topic trended so strongly, I checked out the artist's oeurve, and I saw there a series of images that explained to me why I thought of fantasy artwork in publications like Heavy Metal and the expressive artworks from things like the covers of the Burroughs novels I used to read. The sensibility also informed the artwork on some of the saucier fantasy novels I've seen.
Jones was, by all accounts, a complex and fascinating individual. Transgendered, transitioned MTF in 1999. Member in a small alliance called The Studio back in the 1970s that set the tone for a lot of fantasy art of the day. Celebrated by no less than Frazetta as the "greatest living American painter".
If you can't live forever, it's good to at least leave behind a body of glowing admiration.
In reviewing the work on the artists website, I noted that I'd seen it all before, that style – but in the good way. Jones' work must have been one of those wellsprings of inspiration that a lot of aspiring artists strove to copy as they forged their own styles. You sense the solidity of one of those "shoulders of giants" that others stand on to evolve and forward a craft or school of thought.
Even I, as unfamiliar as I was with the name, find a compellling sense of power in the impressionistic, unfocussed quality. The website (should you enter) has a great number of galleries of drawings and paintings that will give the viewer a fine sense of how important this artist was.
There's something to profit from viewing that site.
Technorati Tags: Jeffrey_Catherine_Jones, Art, Fantasy_Art
No comments:
Post a Comment