36 Artists&Illustrators
JENNY WHITE chats to the Welsh artist about
balancing his love for expressive landscape paintings
with his career as a meticulous architectural illustrator
S
imon Jones’ career has two
distinct halves. On the one
hand he and his wife Caroline
run an architectural visualisation
business, producing watercolour
representations of proposed
architectural projects. The other side
of his work is fine art: his free-flowing,
atmospheric paintings of places in his
native Wales are markedly different
from his architectural works: here,
there is room for experimentation,
spontaneity and happy accidents.
The free flow of water expresses
architectural forms and the effects
of light, with layered washes helping
to define areas of light and shadow.His studio, in his home in Llandeilo,
Carmarthenshire, reflects this
two-pronged career: one orderly side
is given over to the architectural work,
while the other side – a riot of paint
tubes, brushes and half-finished
paintings, is dedicated to the fine art.
Interestingly, this is a relatively recent
development: he abandoned fine art
for many years after feeling he had
lost his way.
“I felt my work had become
formulaic. I was bored and
disappointed with myself,” he recalls.
The career that had funded his
training as an architect was laid aside
for 20 years while he focused on thearchitectural work. His return to fine
art over the past four years marks a
revitalised focus on experimentation
and exploration.
“The paintings have become darker
and more poetic,” he says. “I’m not
just painting the scene in front of me,
I’m trying to paint an archetypal,
timeless version of it.”
In part he has been inspired
by Uruguayan watercolourist and
Artists & Illustrators contributor
Alvaro Castagnet, whose work
exhibits a similarly intense awareness
of light and dark. “He raised the bar
for watercolour painting and his work
is just glorious,” he says. “He usesSimon
Jones
TALKING TECHNIQUES