Part 1: Carroll Jones, Sr.
Carroll Jones, Sr. was Welsh and an amateur painter. He was also head of the Minnewawa Press. (thread) They made labels in N.H. I went there when I was a child and it was just an ocean of spinning spools. I liked him immensely. He invented a little gadget that called birds. It made bird sounds. A small red wood funnel type thing with a metal twist piece. He was also in the 1939 World's Fair with a triptych that I only saw in the barn on his property. Carroll and his wife, Ann ran a boys camp on Swanzea Lake in NH from 1902 until 1933. The depression did them in. He was much more country than BBIV [Blakeslee Barnes IV, Jones' mother's father--RW.] More my type people. I loved both of them though. Carroll use to say things like "Turkey one day, feather's the next." Since we were both artists, that was true too. I once couldn't find something and he said "It's down the cellar behind the ax." That was funny to me then. Today Chris Rock can say nothing but "F**K!!!" and get a standing ovation. I saw that on HBO myself years ago. (when HBO was sent to my apartment by mistake.) The world is passing me by.
I attached a book mark my Grandfather Carroll made at the Minnewawa Press. I have it too. He designed it. Look at the light coming from that star or cross. All just thread. And no computers.
"Gonna be a scorcha!" is what my father's father said once in the summer when I was visiting. He was standing there on the mostly burnt grass with his hands on his hip looking at the white sky in July. That was New Hampshire at the lake. I loved him......funny that my father was not like him at all. Love what grandparents say.
Oh, my grandfather's cat, Nicky, [not the cat in the work--RW], was black short haired cat who loved my grandfather...my father's father......whom I loved too. (both) Grampa died in 1967. I was in school in Hartford Conn. and hitched hiked up to Keene, NJ where he was in a hospital. (from a stroke.) We talked for hours, especially about comics and funny stuff. He had a great sense of humor. We traded current jokes then (from Phyllis Diller who was new on the scene) and other's. We talked a bit about Nicky for some seconds and his wife (Annie) was taking good care of it. I left and hitched hiked back to Hartford.
This is a picture of it today. I was there in the summer's of the 50's to 67. I slept in the screened porch in the top left many time back then.
The other b&w pictures of it are mine and are in the 30's and early 60's. In the front of the house of the lower picture is my father and grampa Carroll which I took. That's where all paintings I do today began....the thinking anyway.
all right brain. I can't express myself verbally ever. I can't talk.
could never be a lawyer. I'm doing what I can do."
" You are talking to the King of Dyslexia of New Jersey. What a terrible nuisance. That may have been why I became an artist (among other things) because I couldn't speak properly - and still can't. I'm better in writing or email when I can have a chance to think of what I want to say. Thinking is good."
" An English teacher back in the late 50's (Annabelle H********...hahaha) told me "Somebody's got to dig the ditches." Why do I remember that all these years?"
"Someday when you come across a cheap copy of Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town', buy it and read. It is a play which takes an hour and a half to see so the read is the same. It touches on life so beautifully. There is no scenery and only a few items such as a chair, table and, later, two ladders representing two homes. Nothing is necessary except the story. Gypsy [the musical] pointed out to me to do something in your life. I did. Then, seeing 'Our Town' a few months later in my junior year knocked it into me how precious life is. The third most important happened not on any one day but over a decade seeing my grandparent's in Swansea, NH. That's where the art came in. Meeting a few people then and seeing the landscapes pointed out how beautiful the country side could be. But really beautiful. The little towns in NH near Keene, NH were where 'Our Town' takes place. The stage manager in the play (really God) points out Mt. Monadnock 'over they-uh' (New England pronunciation) I had climbed about 10 times. No better way to get my attention. And it did.
In a way I am 'some people' too. I spend my life in a room with little around me except the easel and a wonderful CD player. That's enough. The visions I have don't matter to most people so I remain relatively unknown."
All words are Mr. Jones' taken directly from email correspondence.
The owner of "The Young Man With A Violin" has informed me that the original graphite drawing is for sale. He feels it is to Mr. Jones what the Girl With The Pearl Earring is to Vermeer. Please contact Rose at rose@simplegiftsgalleries.com for pricing and more information.
The cat in the window work is not finished, but Mr. Jones has sent a WIP (work in progress) photo I'm very lucky, I don't know why this is, because I am no one of any consequence, not an artist, not a patron. I knew I had seen that pallette in Hoppers work, and visually set the two side by side. Kind of amazing, I know Mr. Jones loved Hoppers work.
I enjoy the way he writes. I hope you do, too.
I didn't intentionally match the colors between Hopper and me, but you're right. I do know that painting (and love it). I almost met Hopper by chance I think it was in the sixties. It had to be in the sixties the later 60's because we both had the same framer....the Matt Brother's in Manhattan. They told me stories about him and his wife....they liked him but his wife was like a yappie little dog....we just never showed up on the same day at the same time. My father introduced me to them but I don't know how he found them. They were very good to me.....and gave me good prices on frames. The Matt Bros. used to do most of the framing for the Met which was two blocks away. They had nine floors in their building and once gave me a tour of most of the floors. I know you didn't ask me anything about them but they were a good part of my early life.
The first work of Carroll Jones III I ever saw was Simple Gifts. It was in and amongst the images for the music scores for the great traditional Shaker hymn by Joseph Brackett, Jr., written in 1848. It was so beautiful, nestled there among the score sheets.
I admired it, but couldn't afford it. Instead, I bought a set of 6 notecards, that I could afford. When the day came for the notecards to arrive, a huge package came directly from the artist, all the way from Jersey City, New Jersey. It was a framed print. I was utterly astonished.
I like to listen occasionally to art critic Rodrigo Canete, who tends to tell it like it is, at least to him. Recently, he had the most interesting artist on his you-tube channel, The Pill. He was very gentle, very interested in an artist he happened to meet and befriend by chance.
"Giving the viewer a different pace, a different place...." Rodrigo Canate spoke to beautiful Swiss artist Angela Lyn, the video available on his blog at Taboofart.com, or on on you-tube. (http://youtu.be/i_sHdsrnBCA ) She reminded me so much, in her work, of Mr. Jones because of the detail. She paints fragments of cedar tree branches, giving attention to each needle. Her work draws you in, and in that, doesn't disappoint. Rodrigo referred to her work as microscopic, although her images may cover entire walls in size. She learned from her Chinese father that beauty is something profound, and powerful. She attempted to show that "long, lost land" of China that he loved in her work, much as Mr. Jones shows the world of his beloved Grandfathers, drawn to the time of WWII. And the warmth in her work...and the fact that she works so hard...and her desire to reach people at a human level...You can see that she is the more unique type of artist, the giver, rather than the taker. Her heart is in it, as is Mr. Jones.
"When you stand from afar... you receive an impact of an image, but when you move in close...you will discover...and keep discovering...and keep discovering, ...and that is when you know something is really there. And that is really essential to me....The details...when your move very close up, are still there....the details will still feed you..."says the artist, when speaking of her own work. Canete notes the tension between the telescopic and microscopic in her work, that if one went any farther into it, they would see the cells.
"What does it mean to look at something fully?" Angela Lyn asks." It has to do with realizing how temporary you are because what you see is going to be gone in a moment, and you are going to be gone a few moments later."
How beautiful! Something different is going on, these are not typical artists.
Mr. Jones had a brilliant career as a portrait artist following his college days. Below is one of his earliest works.Having come from a long line of artists and the difficult classical training he received from his father seemed to have been helpful for his prodigious talent.
"This study of Ann Louria is one of the first portraits I ever did, possibly as far back as 1968 or 69. I had to leave art school in my 5th year in 1967 for what turned out to be several years of back difficulties including two major operations. I started doing some portraits in pencil locally until I could recuperate fully to leave for Alfred University. I had been asked to join their staff as an art teacher. I placed an ad in a local paper to get a few more portraits before I left in the fall. The response to my ad was totally overwhelming. I received enough commissions to last at least 6 months and my new career was started. I have never regretted the decision to be an artist over teacher, and I still got the opportunity to teach privately for about ten years with high school students headed for art schooling."
"I never graduated. I finished the 4th year....most colleges have 4 years.....but I had a difficult summer walking with such pain in my back. I went to Morristown Memorial Hospital where they discovered I had a disc out of place, the bottom one and I had to sleep in traction (and most of each day) in bed to see if the disc when back in place. I was feeling a little better so I went back to school (5th year) and lasted only two weeks. I came home sort of a cripple and had an operation on the back and they took out the bottom disc. I got a little better but still was in pain so much of the time. I had to have a second operation almost a year later. It was 67 now. (66 was the first operation) They took out three more discs and fused everything up. More time in bed recuperating. It was almost 2 years of bed and walking again. I was feeling much better thankfully......and got the letter that I had to report to Vietnam. I went to the physical exactly as I was.....in sort of a cage around my front and back and was let go. The army didn't want me that way. It was a steel brace, rather conformable looking but I had to wear it for a year. It was then needing income I started doing portraits. I lived still at home (so no rent) but I had no source of money. The portrait business really picked up so I was set. Not rich, just set. I moved out into an attic about a mile from my parents home. After living in the Burgdorff attic for 7 years, I moved to Hoboken, NJ to actually start my career. I think I was 33. I ended portraits and started painting. Now I do the rare portrait."
Yes, he does do a rare portrait. Here is the portrait he did of my son, Benjamin. Look, now, I am a common woman, a teacher by training...and very lucky to be Ben's mom. I have the permission of the artist to show you this wonderful portrait he completed for us in 2014. Next to my family and friends, it is the most priceless thing I own. This is done about 45 years later than the first.
According to writer Elizabeth Gilbert, who spoke to American society in her book, Eat Pray Love...the artist might do well to consider her gift of elusive creative genius an indwelling spirit of a divine nature and not a personal attribute. Correlating creative genius today with suffering, depression, and early death are common because artistic genius is equated with “being” a genius, and not “having” a genius. In ancient Greece and Rome, mere mortals were thought to be inhabited by a divine spirit for a limited time, the purpose beyond their ability to know. The Renaissance, that led to great rational humanism 500 years ago, also led to the dismissal of creativity as being of a divine nature; that is, outside of the ego. The artist became solely responsible for her creation, not seeing it imbued by chance and thus outside of her control. In this great battle of rationality versus creativity...creativity lost. Today we know, according to science, the characteristics of the rational mind are in conflict with the characteristics of the creative mind.
Brain researcher Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, author of A Stroke of Insight, uses the wisdom she gained when a stroke shut down the left hemisphere of her brain. She literally felt her body becoming one with the universe, and slowly and somewhat begrudgingly left “La la land” as she calls it, to enter again into a world of logic and reason over 8 years of post-stroke therapy, but she never forgot what she learned. Were artists of the past in touch with this universally loving place?
In the state of art today, the rational mind seeks novelty that only the intuitive mind can reach. It is a schism, brought about by Western thought to rid oneself of the intuitive "divine" nature. No trail is too bizarre, skirting the edges of madness in search of novelty ….as long as one avoids appealing to common aesthetics. Is the artist careening in search of something that was never inside himself to begin with? In his book, The Art Instinct, philosopher Denis Dalton reasons that aesthetics are cross-cultural, cross-historical, and something within our genetic makeup that encourages all humans to reward the virtuoso's work in music, art, and theater- and it has always been so. Art appreciation is not something only within the understanding of a self-appointed class of cultural critics. We are genetically programmed to recognize it. Mozart, Rembrandt, and Shakespeare are revered around the world, not just western societies, because of this mass appeal to the innate aesthetics of ALL men, not because their novelty or class distinction in a cultural sense, according to Dalton. He feels the arts have been in decline the last 200 years, and blames it on a lack of transcendence. “Much of our own art and entertainment is shallow and flashy, made neither for God nor ancestors, but for a market.” Dalton tells the reader.
For the health of the artist..., again, Elizabeth Gilbert begs we see creativity for what it is, a somewhat capricious glimpse of the divine. Rather than the artist attempting to imbue each work with genius through his own efforts; in order to save his or her sanity, it is best to just show up each day and do your job, and hope your genius arrives.
Note: Carroll Jones has know success as an artist because he shows up every day for work. Eight hours a day, seven days a week. I know he believes, as he once told me, "God is in everything." I always wondered why he didn't sell out, commercially. Maybe he has too much respect for "the art spirit". It isn't religion, he hasn't been to church since he was 5 years old.
I have a lot of respect for him.The graphite drawing Church Window was the first work he did following 10 years of commercial success doing portrait drawing of mostly children. It was the first time he felt was being true to his vision. It is in the collection of the Newark Museum in New Jersey.
If you have any ideas, criticisms, or just want to comment, please do!
Mr. Jones began working on this original oil painting following his stroke. He felt like the stroke, and all the rehabilitation involved actually somehow improved his painting. The weather-worn look of the paint on the doors, I wonder if it doesn't signify the weariness of the artist himself. He worked on it, off and on, for four years.
Tenacity is a good word to explain his 53 year span of work. Thirty years ago he rode the tide in NYC, even received a scholarship from Malcolm Forbes...but even in those days he was old school, no "shock and awe" to tittilate the hoi polloi. Never a non-conformist, always an individual.
What does his work say to you?
"I'm glad you sent the pictures from that blog. The picture, that I have not seen of the bird's wing, is out standing. He was a great artist and I think he was around 500 years ago. So advanced. I have studied him for my 'weeds' for years."
I've never known another artist to do weeds so wonderfully as Mr. Jones... Who sees the beauty in a weed, but Carroll Jones III, and Albrecht Durer ?
Please give it a visit. shevaun does a wonderful job. It is her sketchbook, and it is so interesting how she makes a science of art. Next to Jones, I find her studies the most enlightening of all botanical artists.
Carroll Jones III has a wonderfully colorful, detailed oil painting available, as well as a limited number of artist prints, and signed, limited edition prints of his most current work, Vermont Afternoon. It has been a work in progress over the last 4 years. The picture at right is a closeup of the left hand corner while still on the easel in the artist's studio..
Vermont Afternoon is currently available at Gallerie Hudson in Jersey City New Jersey. Contact owner, Phillip at the Gallerie Hudson--197 Newark Ave. -- Jersey City, NJ 07302--201.434.1010. Thanks to Phillip for the photo.
Mr. Jones is not one to toot his own horn, he's pretty humble, and thankful he is able to make a living being an artist.
He is not an ordinary artist. His realism paintings and drawings are as close to perfection as he can get. He may work on them for weeks,months or even years. His attention to detail, light, color give a brightness to his work that almost makes it come alive. We feel as though we have been there. Or, as in the case of Endings, wish we could be there.
So many think the artist's lifestyle is bohemian, free spirited. For some it is. For those who stay, who make a living, it is filled with hours of intense concentration. In this case, the artist, Carroll Jones III of New Jersey sees the finished work in his mind. Over 50 years of preparation have helped him to anticipate the steps it takes to arrive at the end result. In his studio in Jersey City, overlooking the Hudson and NYC across the bay, he works 8 hours a day 7 days a week with the company of Percy and Cally, his red tabby and calico. No vacations, no sick days, he doesn't begrudge the gift of making a living doing what he loves. Once he enters the studio, he enters into another existence, outside the noise and bustle of everyday living, settling into the most comfortable place to be.
Mr. Jones' work is in the Montclair Museum Collection among many others. Coe Kerr Gallery of NYC once represented him, as well as Andrew and Jamie Wyeth. Private collections include those of Malcolm Forbes, Stephen Sondheim, Frederick R Koch (who gave him a $25,000 grant, which Mr. Jones relates he received "from out of nowhere"), Jean Shepherd, and William Schuman, all of whom appreciated his exacting craft, his master skill. Art Critic Marion Filler of the Daily Record referred to Mr. Jones as a quiet man who was "the Keeper of Time's Flame". The vignettes he draws and paints come to life for those who see his work. He makes the commonplace beautiful, he sets the stage for our memories. His work has been compared to Andrew Wyeth's, referring to himself as "the poor man's Andrew Wyeth". He was heavily influenced by Edward Hopper, a student of Robert Henri, of the Ashcan School. His first teacher was his father, Carroll Jones, Junior who was an illustrator for Life magazine and a good friend of Norman Rockwell.
Mr. Jones made a successful living doing portraits for many years before realizing his vision was somewhere else.
His work is a gift to us. He should be taken care of, his work taken care of. He is a precious jewel.
"I was looking for a picture I had drawn of a high school friend and her little brother to email her 50 years later......and I came across these two pictures (polaroids) of my final graphic presentation for my senior graduation from collage. I was a painter but hated the painting teachers (hate is too strong) so I faded out with graphics.
I did it about the letter 'R' named Rodney. He was tired of being at the end of the alphabet and wanted to be first. The story introduced children to words. The teacher board thought it was stupid. But I did graduate. I think I invented Sesame Street. I didn't see TV during 63 to 67 so it may have been on already.
"He was a lower-case letter R with an upper-case imagination."