Martyn Jones – Bittersweet Tangerine Crush

Martyn Jones is a contemporary painter who works from his studio based in Cardiff, Wales, U.K. Jones graduated M.A. Fine Art, at Chelsea School of Art, London and was awarded Junior Fellowship at Bath Academy of Art. Among his tutors were the British artists Patrick Heron and Adrian Heath.
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These abstract works derive inspiration from natural forms. Delving into the everyday reality of the spaces around the artist. Martyn Jones has described his subject matter as ‘My experiences of the world are the prime material for abstraction, employing my personal alphabet of shapes and colour’.

The vibrant almost neon colours reflect the vibrancy he sees in the world. The use of saturated colours are distinctive within Jones work. The expansive colours take on abstract shapes in which consume the composition but within these are small jewel-like accents of bright glimmering ultramarine, umber, violet or viridian creating deep sumptuous chromatic blacks on the canvas.

One key motif within this body of work is the apparent chalk line. Jones has said this invokes fragility to him that ‘I see these as precious and fragile, a gesture made by a child in chalk, and I feel that I capture the spontaneity of a child’s drawing with them, however, these lines cannot be created with a single or continuous brushstroke, they are painstakingly made with a tiny brush. The overall effect has a sense of immediacy, but the creative process is very different to this’.

On the topic of the overall aim with his work, Jones said ‘I think ultimately, I am searching for something unobtainable, a calm tranquility, an impossible form of transcendence, a perfect existence and that is what brings me back to the canvas’.