Neal Jones (born Liverpool; 1969) studied at Canterbury College of Art and Design (now University of Creative Arts) and the Prince’s Drawing School (now The Royal Drawing School). He creates and exhibits works fashioned from items found in bins or from things left lying about including scrap wood, old tins, and plastic buckets and turns this into joyful, countercultural sculpture and painting, depicting figures, animals, landscape with humour and beauty.

 

In the artist’s own words written for his exhibition NATURE SCUM:

‘IS an aesthetic: sensual and philosophical.

IS a preference for the outdoors and LIFELINESS.

IS an attempt at TRADITIONAL landscape intoxication, FOLK ART cloddishness, and SWEET RELIGIOUS colour and formality.

IS an attempt at strange painterliness, good honest manufacturing, pleasure, recycling and poor hope.

IS marbling and slippage, surprising detail, errors welcomed in like strangers, balance, grungeiness and ECO love.

IS a self-deprecating description of ME as left wing greeny, spouting hippy bollocks.

IS a potential new term for a species indifferent to advertising platitudes, business and media tartistry.

IS trying to get beauty to make friends with ugliness.

IS ok about life that includes comedy and death.

IS whether you like it or not.

IS a description of all perceived to be lower than ourselves.

ALL the same: cats, worms, flies, humans: all funny, all needy, all greedy, all passing by.’[1]

 

[1] Press release for ‘Neal Jones, NATURE SCUM’, 24 August – 19 September 2015. Southard Reid, London http://www.southardreid.com/exhibitions/detail/jones-nature-scum/#