Paula Jones

Paula Jones started painting when she turned 45, at the urging of a very good friend who was also an artist.  She was remodeling homes at the time, when a friend encouraged her to "get creative!".  Soon after, Paula went for her first art lesson.  She admits she was overwhelmed.  "I had no idea where to start - from the laying out of my paints, to the sketching and putting down color.  She (my teacher) had to hold my hand all the way through."  After that, Paula Jones artist was born. 

Paula began her art career and education by devouring books and was drawn to Russian Impressionism painting.  One artist in particular - Sergei Bongart - caught her eye.  "I loved his boldness, his color, his brushwork, and so I sought out his students," explains Paula.  She would drive from the middle of Kansas to Evergreen, Colorado to study with Don Sahli once a week in the middle of the winter.  Her thirst for knowledge about art and the process was unquenchable.  She studied with Guido Frick, the most influential of all her teachers, for a total of 3 months over a two year period.   Paula says, "He had a freedom about his work that I couldn’t get enough of."

Paula is currently represented by galleries in New Mexico and Arkasas, as well as paintings in private collections from Colorado and up through Canada. 

I tried so hard not to be an artist. I spent the first part of adulthood as that stereotypical, Midwestern mother and housewife assisting her husband’s career and raising children.Once my passion for creating works of art was ignited by a close friend, my entire life, as I knew it, completely changed.

At first I dove into making art, then backed away, trying different hats that had nothing to do with being an artist. Only problem was: it wasn’t painting. When I returned to the studio, I went from 60 paintings a year, to 200, then 400. My family seriously thought I’d lost my mind when I moved to New Mexico immersing myself in Native American spiritual ceremonies, and painting.

Both my abstracts and animal pieces come from internal messages that allow me to create spontaneous bridges between my inner, intuitive world and my outer world. I feel each painting as a very personal request. They ask me to paint them and I listen.

My recent series, The Message, is (so far) four, large (40” x 30”) pieces that unfolded so quickly I had no choice but to listen as the colors spoke: Just a touch of Pyrrole Red here, lots of Nickel Gold blended underneath this edge of black... Painting feels most spontaneous and fresh when I chill, meditate, take a couple of deep breaths, and ask myself to get out of my own way.

At least 6 times a week, I start a painting, finish it, and then hang it in the house where I can pass by touching it, feeling it, tapping into the message of the painting and how it calls for what is inside to come out. I like pulling in the new the way you open a window to let in fresh air.

I start with a sketch where my former, interior design sense turns the canvass into a room I’m composing.I take time to mentally choose the colors, knowing when I start it’s going to be physically intense as I cover even a large canvass in fifteen minutes, take a short break, then start scooping thick chunks paint–oil or acrylic-onto my brush, pushing, pulling, sculpting to give shape and dimension as I create something out of nothing, as I breath the life force into being.