Robert C. Jones was born in West Hartford, CT, in 1930. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design, receiving a BFA (1953) and an MS (1959). In 1963, Jones moved to Seattle with his wife, painter Fay Jones, to join the faculty of the University of Washington School of Art. He retired in 2001.

Jones' large abstract oil paintings often invoke a sense of background landscape, with foreground figures and shapes drawn as simple curves. His canvases are heavily layered. White and black are often primary, with vivid colors providing the impression of light and shade.

Robert Jones' work has been included in over 40 solo and group exhibitions, and is part of a number of public and corporate collections. His paintings have been shown at the Tacoma Art Museum, the Bellevue Art Museum, the Museum of Northwest Art, the Seattle Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Art. He was the recipient of a 2003/2004 Flintridge Foundation award for westcoast artists "whose work demonstrates high artistic merit and a distinctive voice for 20 or more years. Jones died in 2018 at the age of 88."

Jones' dynamic abstract oil paintings, Time Enough and Space (left) and Garden (right), can be seen on the 5th floor of the Allen Center and the 2nd floor of the Gates Center.


Links

Seattle's Public Art video on Robert Jones

Museum of Northwest Art article on Robert Jones

G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle

HistoryLink.org Article on Bob Jones

Seattle Times Obituary


Books

Robert C. Jones, by John Boylan. University of Washington Press, January 2000.



Art in the Allen Center