NICHOLAS JONES

Paintings of Silence

It is with great pleasure that North House Gallery presents this solo show of 50 paintings by Nicholas Jones. Each of the gallery's five spaces will be hung with a distinct theme: fire; moon; aurora; Arctic and Holy Isle.

Nicholas Jones, born in Bristol in 1965, studied Fine Art at Bristol Polytechnic, where his degree show in 1987 showed an appreciation of the landscapes of Samuel Palmer and luminosity. After graduation he worked for three years solely in stained glass, but in 1990 he suddenly returned to painting and worked with increasing confidence, showing regularly with the Crane Kalman Gallery in London.

Landscape, abstraction, colour and light have long been the dominant themes of Nick's painting. Between 2014 and 2017 he made a number of visits to Finnish Lapland, resulting in more than sixty paintings (four in this show) attempting to evoke the other-worldly beauty of the Aurora Borealis. In the search for an even simpler landscape, reflecting his search for inner peace, he was inspired to go yet further north into the Arctic Circle. His appointment in 2018 as the Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute's Arctic Artist in Residence provided him with the opportunity to immerse himself in the light and landscape of Greenland and Baffin Island and was the catalyst for a significant new body of work, a selection of which will be exhibited in this exhibition. As he explains: "It brought a clarity to my painting and stirred a powerful desire to speak about the fragile beauty of this astonishing region, itself in such a state of rapid change, but on whose wellbeing we all depend."

It is a privilege to be the first gallery to show the three most recent series of paintings (fire, moon and Holy Isle), depictions of passion, wonder and tranquility respectively.

Nick's work was recognised by two awards in 2022. His painting 'Dawn Light, Cape Mercy, Baffin Island' was the winner of the 'Earth’s Wild Beauty' category of the David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year Award in association with with BBC Wildlife magazine. He was also awarded the prestigious Royal Geographical Society's Cherry Kearton Medal and Award for his polar landscapes. Already this year his work has just been longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2023.