Hello world, from Life: Full Colour!
8 January 2019
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Jill Jones radiates happiness and optimism. You can’t help but smile when you view Jill’s dramatic Welsh coastlines, admire her vibrant botanicals, or imagine her dancing to ACDC when she’s finished a painting.
The Pembrokeshire artist has always loved art, winning competitions and selling her paintings when she was just a teenager. Yet an interview at London’s Central School of Art and Design threw her off course and saw her follow commercial design for 30 years. Now, at 57, Jill’s pursuing her passion once again and is looking forward to her first solo exhibition at Life: Full Colour this summer.
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Jill Jones’ earliest artistic memories are being given paper, crayons, and pencils by her parents in order to keep her quiet at church. She recalls a drawing book filled with pictures of ladies’ shoes, obviously due to the vantage point of a young child as Jill said she had no interest in shoes!
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At school, Jill pursued her love of art which she says came naturally to her. At 16, her art teacher was the famous Wigan artist Gerald Rickards, who often entered Jill’s paintings into competitions.
“Gerald was a big inspiration to me and I thought he was outstanding. He was mild-mannered, patient, and brought out the best in your art. He would always say, “it’s better to have a plan and change it than to have no plan at all” when it came to the creating stage.”
She studied her O and A Levels in Art but an experience when she was 18 knocked her off course.
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“I went for an interview at The Central School of Art and Design in London. It was going very well, lasting about 40 minutes when the lecturer decided to show me out via the back stairs. As I was leaving, he said to me: If I have a student whose artwork isn’t very good, I shall fling it down the stairs!”
This experience combined with knowing there were few opportunities to get her dream job as an artist in residence, lead to Jill studying a design degree and pursuing a career in commercial art and design.
“To be honest, I had worried about it for a while. I lost my father at ten, so I knew I needed to earn money and I’d come to a conclusion there were only a few jobs in fine art. I had to be realistic.
“After I left college, I worked for a few of the big design studios. I was design assistant at Ravenhead Glass, designer at the head office of Pontins, and sole designer at Duralay. This is where I met my husband Norm and we left there to set up a design business in 1996 which is now Jill Jones Design.”
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An entrepreneurial couple, Jill and her husband also run a promotions business and let holiday cottages. As a result, it wasn’t until Jill went on holiday in 2015 that she decided to fully get back into art. “I did this painting for the lounge of a holiday cottage that we were doing up, and the painting was fabulous.”
Yet the painting almost didn’t make it home. “My husband packed the car and there was no room for my painting so it had to sit on top of the luggage. We spent 11 hours driving back from Northumberland in fear of the painting sticking to the roof. We were nearly home when one of the border terriers managed to sit on it, so I came home with a semi-dry oil painting that had stuck to the roof and featured a paw print. Luckily it was an abstract impressionist piece so it wore the marks well!.”
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That painting is now in the Oriel Llanteglos Gallery in Pembrokeshire and it kick-started a slew of interest in Jill’s work. She’s been approached by a number of galleries to show her work, including Life:Full Colour where she was one of 40 artists selected for the gallery’s inaugural open show, Passing the Lantern, and where she will soon open her solo exhibition, Blooming.
“All my paintings tend to be happy or make you happy. I don’t do anything that’s miserable. it’s got to be full of hope and optimism, a bit like me really. This is why I’m really excited about my upcoming show, Blooming, which is joy on canvas through floral images.”
The Cancerian and avid beach lover gains comfort from her proximity to the Pembrokeshire coastline but it’s also her main source of inspiration.
“Until recently, the majority of my paintings have a coastal theme and I try to capture the feeling of going on holiday. The sea, the smells of the seaweed, and all this time to enjoy it. It’s that bursting feeling of happiness as well as memories of where people have been. I want to transport you to a happy place.
“I’m spoilt for choice in Wales. Pembrokeshire has 50 beaches and you could paint them all year round, and I love the architecture of the traditional cottages. It’s an exquisitely beautiful part of Wales, a treasure chest of gorgeousness. But I also have a wider Wales collection, and I’ve painted three of Angelsey so far featuring Llanddwyn Island, Trearddur Bay, and Penmont Point.”
The Welsh landscape has provided further inspiration for Jill’s latest exhibition celebrating native flowers, as well as the introduced species you can see in the Pembrokeshire countryside and along the coast.
“We have the most amazing array of wildflowers,” says Jill. ” I’m so lucky to be surrounded by nature’s beauty.”
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While Jill is not yet painting full time, she spends her weekends painting about four to five hours and now has more than 120 original paintings available for sale.
“Typically, I’ll have various paintings on the go at once. I fall out with them sometimes but I’ll come back and fall in love with them again. I’m so excited when it’s flowing correctly. I’m just like Tigger and I can’t contain myself until it’s done because it’s so joyous. I usually end up putting on something fabulous and having a boogie. It’s usually to ACDC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap!”
Her process has evolved over time, originally starting at the bottom of the painting but now Jill focusses on her skies.
“I used to always start at the bottom and work up. Now, I start with my skies, which I believe I’m very good at, followed by my horizons, and then I do a lot of the background painting. I under paint a lot, up to three whole times. A painting can change colours completely.”
Jill’s colour choices can be traced back to a comic she loved as a child called Once Upon A Time. “The magazine was gloriously intense full colour, with laminate on the pages and the illustrations were edge to edge. Every single page was fantasy, everything else was dull in comparison.
“My colour choices are reminiscent of that magazine. I chose subtle versions of very inspiring, uplifting colours which reflect my cheery and happy style. Perhaps it is also a response to where I grew up in Wigan which has a lot of grey and concrete. Whereas in Wales, there’s a real clarity of light near the sea and you get so many fabulous skies. The sky goes on for acres, it’s wonderful.”
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Jill’s happiness and contentment is clear to anyone who spends time in her company. She’s an artist who loves what she does, and simply looks forward to her work continuing to improve and evolve.
This love of painting is one Jill now shares with students who join her at a purpose-built stand-alone studio facility, West Coast Studio in Talbenny. She established the Havens Art School prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and now takes regular classes for up to four people at a time, a class size that ensures they all receive maximum benefit from the tuition.
“I feel happier now at this point of my life and I’m more content as a person. Life is short and precious, so stop worrying about things you can’t affect and go with what makes you happy.
I can’t think of anything else I want to do, I just want to get better and better. I’d like to get to a place where people are ringing me up to ask have you got any more for me?”
Jill’s work is now available at Life: Full Colour and her first solo exhibition, “Blooming” will open at the gallery on 8th July. You can read more about the exhibition here.
Call us on 01286 674 719 or email hello@lifefullcolour.com if you’d like an original Jill Jones’ painting or limited edition print for your home.
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If you’d like to escape to the seaside every day or feel the touch of summer simply by gazing at one of Jill Jones’ paintings, sign up now! We’ll keep you up to date with her latest work in the gallery, and you’ll be invited to the preview of Jill’s solo exhibition, Blooming, which opens on 8th July 2022.
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