Fay Jones’ work conveys the intimacy of mind, emotion, and spirituality. As a whole, Jones’ paintings echo a tremendous sense of humanity. The pieces meld figures, animals and symbols to conjure up existential meaning of human experience. Her characters become signifiers, representing the watery depth of the unconscious.
From Wikipedia
Fay Jones received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1957. Awards she has received include the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors grant in 2013, the Seattle Art Museum’s 2006 Poncho Artist of the Year award, grants from the NEA in 1983 and 1990, the Washington State Arts Commission in 1984, and La Napoli Art Foundation in 1989. Her work has been extensively collected in the Northwest, and is included in the collections of the Portland Art Museum and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Oregon, and the Seattle Art Museum and the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington, as well as the Cities of Seattle and Portland. Major exhibitions include a 2007 retrospective at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University, a 1997 traveling retrospective with the Boise Art Museum, and exhibitions at the Portland Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, WA, the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, and the Palm Springs Desert Museum in California.
Fay Jones (born 1936, birth name Fay Bailey) is an American artist, based in Seattle, Washington. A large number of her works are exhibited in public places in the Pacific Northwest, including a mural in the Westlake Station of the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel and a painting in Seattle's opera house, McCaw Hall. A 1986 retrospective organized by the Boise Art Museum also showed at the Seattle Art Museum.[1]
Early life
In 1953, she graduated from high school and enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).[1] In 1956, she met RISD drawing instructor Robert C. Jones (b. 1930); they married the following year, and moved to Seattle in 1960, where Robert Jones became a member of the art faculty of the University of Washington. They had four children, born between 1958 and 1966.
Career
She had her first exhibit in 1970 at the Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle.[1] In the mid-1980s, she was selected, along with Roger Shimomura and Gene Gentry McMahon to design major murals for the Westlake Station of the new Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. A 1996 retrospective organized by the Boise Art Museum[2] also showed at the Seattle Art Museum and at the Washington State University Museum of Art in Pullman, Washington.[1]
She illustrated one card (Stasis) for the debut set of the soon-to-be-famous Magic: The Gathering trading card game as a favor for her nephew, the game's designer Richard Garfield.[3]
In 2006, Jones and her husband had a joint show at the Casa Museo Gene Byron in Guanajuato. They maintain a primary residence in West Seattle.[1]
Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Seattle Art Museum.[4]
Awards
2013 - Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors grant[5]
2006 - Seattle Art Museum’s Poncho Artist of the Year award
1983 and 1990 - grants from the NEA
1984 - Washington State Arts Commission
1989 - La Napoli Art Foundation