Open | Tu-Fr 9-5pm, Sat 12-5pm 
1400 S Grand St, Monroe, LA 71202 
318-329-2237 
Peter Jones: Contemporary Realist Retrospective
On View: November 21, 2024 – February 1, 2025
Public Reception: November 21, 2024 5:30 – 7:30PM
Artist Statement:
“I work in oil on panel or canvas, preferably from life, as the nuances of light captured by the human eye exceed the capability of a single photographic exposure. I find this facilitates a more painterly approach. I believe that still life narratives can be contemporary and not just a reflection of nostalgia for a vanished past. A lemon may have symbolized transience in a Dutch still life, but in my work, it can play a variety of formal and domestic roles in addition to being a code for the 17th century. The same objects recur in in different roles, and the table becomes a stage, or, in postmodern terms, a field of signs and signifiers. Still lifes provide endless opportunities within a studio, while plein aire landscape painting requires travel. Landscape is my most abstract work, with a direct response to an environment. For forty years, I painted largely plein aire landscapes in trips to Italy and Vermont; however, since 2019 my continuing interest in photography and my use of a new limited palette has led to my current series of photo-based downtown landscapes, undertaken during the COVID shutdown. My work is usually small in scale, as I like the intimacy of a small painting as well as the enhanced visual weight of the individual objects. The brushstrokes are also more apparent in a small picture, counting for even more, as does the frame that completes the piece—a lesson I learned from Robert Kulicke, whose small still life paintings had a strong impression on me. He also taught me frame design, construction, and finishing techniques, as well as his concept of “eclectic framing”—the use of historical designs in conjunction with contemporary work.”
About the Artist:
Peter Jones is a figurative painter with a deep respect for the abstract accomplishments of the 20th Century. He grew up in the artists’ community of Woodstock, New York, where his mother painted portraits and his father painted mural commissions for the Federal Government projects during the Depression. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa in 1969, and focused on still life painting in the early 70s during his first teaching experience at Sullins College. Following seven years as art director of Vermont Life Magazine he came to Louisiana Tech in 1980, and taught there for 31 years. During that period he had two one-man shows at A.M Adler Fine Arts in New York City, and one-man shows at Amherst College and in Woodstock, New York, Charleston, West Virginia, Charleston, South Carolina, and Charlottesville, Virginia. He had a 25 year retrospective in Ruston in 2005 and an exhibition of still lifes at the Alexandria Museum in 2006. Since his retirement he has continued to exhibit still lifes and landscapes in group shows in Louisiana and national juried shows. In 2023 he had a retrospective exhibition at ULM’s Bry Gallery.
