Bristol-based artist Elaine Jones (b. 1975) grew up in the Midlands, completed an art and design foundation at Newcastle-under-Lyme College (where she was awarded the Fine Art Prize for Painting), graduated in Fine Art/Painting from Loughborough University in 1998 and has been painting professionally ever since.
Elaine paints distinctive, ethereal landscapes that capture the beauty of the natural environment. Inspired by her travels to remote locations such as the cloud forests of Costa Rica and the glaciers of the Arctic, and, most recently, the majestic mountains, lush forests and crystal-clear coasts of the Mediterranean, Elaine’s vibrant, atmospheric paintings convey the sense of awe one feels in the planet’s wild open spaces and looking out over the ocean and mountains.
Her signature silky smooth, sweeping areas of blue paint conjure up serene seas and skies, reflecting and radiating the ever changing light of hot climates. Expressive and spontaneous abstracted landscapes emerge alongside, evolving from layers of paint poured, scratched, brushed, pushed and rubbed out across the surface of the painting. The end result is a harmonious balance of chaos and order, serenity and movement, space and colour.
“When I’m working on the floor and moving paint around, I let it do its own thing to a certain degree – it’s the paint itself that dictates the painting, rather than the landscape. I add and take away paint as time goes on, and enjoy not knowing how it’s going to turn out,” Elaine explains.
Elaine is a keen sketcher, recording her observations on her travels in sketchbooks and on her iPad. On recent journeys in rural Spain, Italy and Greece, she worked from the train as well as en plein air, which resulted in a large collection of loose, energetic drawings with a hot palette of pinks, oranges and yellows, which have been informing her paintings back in her Bristol studio.
Elaine’s work has been extremely successfully received at art fairs and in exhibitions in the UK, Europe and the US for over two decades, including, most recently, solo shows with First Contemporary in 2023, Fairfax Gallery in 2023 and 2021 and Clifton Contemporary in 2020, and regular group shows with those galleries as well as with Sarah Wiseman Gallery, Wills Art Warehouse and Modern Art Buyer. Elaine also works with design consultancies Artelier and International Corporate Art in Oslo, where she has completed various large-scale commissions for yachts and sailing boats. We were delighted to show Elaine’s paintings on our stand at London Art Fair in January 2025.
