About Fay Jones

“I have always used drawing as a way of taking notes. When I was in the fifth grade, in a small-town Massachusetts school, instead of the prescribed tree with autumn leaves, I drew, with great conviction, a fancy woman sitting on a bar stool, with a highball in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I learned early that what you make isn’t necessarily going to be praised.

I attended the Rhode Island School of Design. There I discovered the films of Jean Cocteau, fell in love with the work of Piero della Francesca, and, in 1955, saw a show of Rothko’s paintings, which set free all of the boundaries I imagined enclosed the definition of painting. During and since art school, I have been most deeply influenced by Phillip Guston’s work – his painting and his intelligence about painting.

My own work is fiction, set in the present. Caught between curious affection for history and anxiety for the future, I draw on a vivid and inaccurate memory and somewhat quirky observations of contemporary American life. I am married to the painter Robert Jones and we have four children, which is the most important counterbalance to my art.” – Fay Jones