Bridges, Birches and Barns – Arthur Jones
[img_assist|nid=477|title=Arthur Jones|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=194|height=250]The Southern Vermont Arts Center celebrates local Dorset Artist Arthur Jones
One signature Arthur Jones painting (among a dozen genres) is a Vermont landscape-classic barn buildings set in spacious fields, backed by soft-outline mountains and a cloud-strewn sky. Rendered in uncounted variations of structures’ shape and color, of seasons, weather, and day’s light, these works are perennially popular and represent a store of artistic output that stretches over more than a half-century in the life of this Dorset artist and native.
Jones, whose paintings may measure as much as 24" x 36", did his earliest work in miniature format, just 4" x 5". Back in the late 1940s he was a familiar figure riding around town, his bike basket holding a shoebox with brushes, a few tubes of paint, and some small canvas boards, as he hunted up the right country subject. At the chosen spot, he’d set to work, balancing the board, anchored by a finger, on the handlebars. As he conjures up those days long ago, a listener learns about real-life plein air. Boards with wet paint often blew off the bike, invariably landing paint-side down. "Fortunately," Jones explains, "when the oil dries, you can scrape the gravel off-many paintings skidded along the roadside."
First invited in 1948 at age 20 to show his work in the Burr and Burton gym with the group known as the Southern Vermont Artists, he advanced in 1954 to his first solo show at the Art Center, by then ensconced in Yester House on the side of Mt. Equinox. That event netted Jones $190 on sales of ten little oils, priced from $15 to $35 each. Fast-forward to his last solo exhibition at SVAC in 2004: showgoers purchased more than 90% of the paintings, including one priced at $35,000, the record for a Jones work.
Son of a farmer and housewife who lived at the top of Dorset’s Nichols Hill Road, he still lives nearby. Although there are no other fine artists in the family, his sister Gloria Jordan of Manchester is known among anglers for her high-quality hand-tied flies. One youthful intra-family influence: a paternal uncle who amused him by drawing cartoons. The absence of a consuming art bent among his relatives made Jones wonder at times when he was growing up. "I even accused the family of adopting me," he chuckles. Above all, he credits Vermont itself with his impulse to paint: "Being born here in all these beautiful surroundings-a painter’s paradise."
By his early teens, sketching and watercolor painting were Arthur’s constant occupations. His father-told "I can’t get milk out of that cow"-always encouraged his art work, even moved a small building from East Dorset to Nichols Hill so Arthur would keep his paints out of the living room. In that 12 x 12-ft. workspace he had a little wiring and some heat as well as a bit of furniture. Later, when people came to look at his paintings, he’d move the furniture out so they could get inside.
School held little interest for him, and after his junior year at Burr and Burton Seminary, he didn’t return to pursue a high-school diploma. Subsequently, he "mowed every lawn on the West Road," using a push mower, and earning 35 cents an hour.
Often described as self-taught, Jones says that’s true-"in a sense." Yet his introduction to the rudiments of painting actually came from artist Ada Davis. After mowing her lawn, the teenager was just happy to look at her art collection, including works by her father, John Lillie, one of Dorset’s prominent early painters. Not Jones-but other local kids-told Davis that her mower was also a painter. At her invitation, Arthur had his first instruction at sixteen….
By Susanne Washburn
Photography by Hubert Schriebl