I was sorry to hear that Jeffrey Catherine Jones died yesterday at the age of 67.
Jones, As I reported in my brief 2006 post, was an influential fantasy artist and illustrator who also did comics and gallery art.
Part of The Studio, a renowned group of illustrators and comics artists in the 1970’s that included Barry Windsor-Smith, Berni Wrightson and Michael William Kaluta, Jones had been called “the greatest living painter” by Frank Frazetta.
Jones helped introduce classical art themes into comics, but was primarily known for her atmospheric, painterly and wonderfully textural paintings for fantasy book covers.
There are a couple of collections of Jones’ work that appear to be out of print, but can be found used: The Art of Jeffrey Jones, Jeffrey Jones: A Life in Art and Age of Innocence: The Romantic Art of Jeffrey Jones. There is also a Jeffrey Jones Sketchbook, which is more readily available.
Maria Cabardo has been working on a film about Jones’ life and art titled Better Things: The Life and Choices of Jeffrey Catherine Jones. Her studio, MaCab films, initiated a Kickstarter project to fund the film but it fell short. I believe they are still soliciting donations directly, though I don’t know the current status of the project. There is another clip here.
There is a nice tribute to Jones on the Muddy Colors blog.
