In a style that was markedly influenced by his contemporaries Roy Krenkel and Frank Frazetta, Jeff Jones created fantasy and science fiction illustration through the 1960’s and 70’s that was distinguished by strong use of color and texture and a wonderful sense of line within his painterly delineation of form.
Jones was also a comics artist and for a time shared a studio with Berni Wrightson, Michael Kaluta and Barry Windsor-Smith (see my previous post on Windsor-Smith). For a few years in the 1970’s Jones contributed a regular one page strip to the National Lampoon called Idyl, which never seemed to be about anything exactly, but was beautifully drawn in Jones’ distinctive pen and ink style that is somehow simultaneously spare and lush.
In addition to the fantasy artists who informed his early work, Jones has explored the territory carved out by illustrators like N.C. Wyeth as well as romantic painters like John William Waterhouse and James McNeil Whistler.
Over the years Jones moved away from illustration and began to paint directly for gallery exhibition. At the same time his style evolved, picking up colors and compositional elements from Expressionism. His more recent work is sometimes more fully realized, sometimes loose, but always filled with variety in color, texture and subject.
