Working from Home

A new collection of oil paintings by Elaine Jones is available now. The collection, developed throughout the coronavirus lockdown, brings together the landscapes of Elaine’s garden and local area in Bristol as well as memories of her travels around Greece last summer.

Beech Tree, St Andrews Park | 30x30cm | Oil | £850

Lockdown

Access to nature and green spaces has become increasingly important to many during the lockdown. Elaine has found great pleasure in taking the opportunity to really look at nature close up, both in her garden and in her local area, making observational sketches using an iPad. Throughout these digital drawings and subsequent paintings Elaine has been focusing on individual details; leaves, branches and the negative space in between them. Working in this more granular way is very new to Elaine as she usually tries to capture much larger vistas and evoke the essence of a place as a whole.

Although many of the paintings have been inspired by the structure and form of trees, the works remain loose and are not directly representational. When you hone in on a detail the shapes look quite abstract and the work starts to shift away from the original subject matter to become more about the paint itself.

Elaine's home studio set up

Garden with Conifer | 30x30cm | Oil | £850

Greece

The collection also features paintings inspired by Elaine’s travels around Greece with her family last summer. Stopping first at the tiny island of Halki, the family then moved across to Symi, where they explored the more remote areas of Pedi and Emporio. The new works beautifully capture the deep blues of the sea and sky, as well as the iconic forms of olive and fig trees set against a backdrop of mountains.

Tree at Symi | 30x30cm | Oil | £850

Digital Drawings

Elaine’s digital drawings have been hugely influential on this collection of paintings as she has been translating the exciting new language of marks and textures discovered through using the iPad into paint. The iPad enables Elaine to get information down quickly and combine the textures and effects of oil paint, watercolour, pens and pencils in one place. This sense of immediacy, along with limited time to paint in lockdown, has allowed Elaine to work more decisively, giving a freshness and energy to these new works.