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With education as its central purpose, the 28,000 square foot Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA) promises to become a major regional cultural attraction in Cedar City by providing space to exhibit, collect and preserve historic and contemporary works of art significant to the interior American West. Read more about SUMA
SUMA Stories
The following text is from Jim Jones: Recent Paintings. By Jon Smith and Jim Aton. Published 2009.
"I was probably drawing from the time I was a little kid because I do remember drawing a lot. I remember entertaining myself. I was never much interested in movies and things like that. I wanted to draw. And by the time I got out of high school I knew I was going to be an artist. I learned there was no such thing as an easy path in art.
"When I left college, I went to Mexico to paint, to do a master’s thesis. I had to put together a show, so I spent the winter doing sixteen paintings. Mexico was an enormous influence on me; I loved everything about it- the color, the people, the strangeness of the place. I was going to submit it to a committee at the University of Utah, and I stopped in Tucson to have some things framed, and the guy offered me a show. So I sold my thesis; I had a show and there went my master’s degree down the drain!
"I was a bartender at Grand Canyon Lodge for four summers. That was my last “job”. I graduated and just started painting full time. Just as I was starting to learn something about the figure, my interest was usurped by landscape painting. I’m actually a better landscape painter than I was a figure painter.
"I have moved into an intimacy with the place I never imagined possible. The Grand Canyon is my passion now. It’s like a lover you cannot get enough of. It’s my odyssey. I’ve only done 124 paintings of it, but I’ve managed to get it just about every place that can be reached by road, a pretty good road…. I just can’t get enough of it! You can get a good composition from any view. You have all these strong verticals and then the horizontal layers of sediment. Then all these diagonal shadows tie it together. It falls into place so beautifully. If you are going to paint the Grand Canyon as a representational landscape, the features should be recognizable. Thomas Moran only got it half right.
"I love the diversity and verticality of [Zion National Park]. Something about it, takes my breath away- at any time of day. Of all the places I’ve lived, [Zion] is the best. Outside you hear the birds singing, you smell smoke and feel the wind blowing through the trees. You watch color changes happening before you-even flies and minor nuisances contribute to the whole experience. You can’t help but get some of that in your work."
Jim died peaceful at his home, on December 5, 2009. Jim had requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Southern Utah Museum of Art in care of SUU Advancement Office, 351 W. University Blvd, Cedar City, UT 84720 - (435) 586-7775. Jones left both his home and last 14 paintings to Southern Utah University to help fund construction of the university's new museum of art.
- “That Southern Utah University will now be the repository of the latest works of this amazingly talented artist is both exhilarating and appropriate."
- Michael T. Benson, President of Southern Utah University - “No one paints like him. These last ten years he’s his own artist now. His has a way of seeing things that people haven’t seen before.”
-Kathy LaFave, Manager of Worthington Gallery - “He is an inspiration to southern Utah painters; his work will stand the test of time.”
- Arlene Braithwaite, Professor of Art at Southern Utah University - “He is the pater famillias of the artists of the red rock. He is the mentor, the people recognize the quality and his approach- and it is distinctive by any way. There is nobody that paints like Jimmie Jones."
-Vern Swanson, Director of Springville Museum of Art
Jim Jones catalogue including Jimmie Jones: Red Rock Painter, a documentary by Jon M. Smith and James M. Aton, can be purchased at the Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery. Call (435) 586-5432 for more information.
