The Connection

Guy Jones hunches over his clay board panel in Studio 337 working on a pen and ink commission of a guy's dad in Vietnam. "The father is standing there in his uniform but had adorned himself with a beautiful red flower. His son wanted to catch that spin of his father." Jones says he has several pictures of the father as examples and will create a new image. "I sketched the face this morning. By tomorrow I should have it knocked out."

Jones has been drawing "since I could hold a bloody pencil. I'm self taught. My drawing is realistic but stylized." He adds, "There is energy behind it. I want you to feel the person in this force." He says he rarely does rough drafts. "I pick a subject and go off on it." He explained, "even if I have a vision, it takes on its own form. You have to know when to let it go. It takes off on its own."

After retiring as 25 years as a framer in Alexandria, Jones found a home at Del Ray Artisans gallery on Mount Vernon Avenue. He said it was his platform to grow, "and I was sort of their success story." A scholastic publishing company saw his work on the gallery's website and asked Jones to illustrate some children's books. "I'd never been published before. I guess they hauled this first book off by the tractor trailer-full.“ The 14x17 inch color pen and ink of "Wind in the Willows" sits on his desk. He explains teachers turn the oversized pages as they read to their kids sitting in a circle format on the floor.

This book was about a four-month project. "I sat at the kitchen table. My commute was to walk downstairs, make some coffee and turn on a British talk show host." He would send in each detailed page to the publisher and out of 70 pages they only asked for one modification; it was the map on the last page. Jones says he spent some time on the computer — what did an English cottage look like in the 1900s? "I worked every day. It consumes you. Throw 9 a.m.-5 p.m. out the window. I may take a nap in the afternoon and then wake up at 3 a.m. and start working." He says it is surrealistic — “a world within a world."

Two years ago Jones was accepted as a juried artist at the Torpedo Factory and his work just started snowballing. "But getting a space in the Torpedo Factory was next to impossible." Then he got lucky when another artist volunteered to let him share her space. Illustrations of crows, owls, and skulls line the wall in his space in the studio. "People love the skulls." A frog with an accordion has been chosen by Del Ray Artisans as the raffle prize at their current FUN-derful show running from Aug. 5-28 at the gallery on Mt. Vernon Avenue. His raffle box was stuffed full of tickets. "I'm making a little noise."

Jones ruminates. "I am a quarter Cherokee Indian and while other boys were drawing machines, I was drawing animals. I am a naturalist." He says he mixes animals with his studies, man and nature. Jones says he worked with a medicine man for about 10 years learning the ceremonies, "part of my religion and heritage. I wrestled with whether to be a healer or an artist and I found out art is healing." He remembers a man whose son was fighting testicular cancer and the man wanted a portrait of his son as St. George fighting the dragon with cancer symbolically as the dragon. When he came in to pick it up, I didn't charge him. "I said it's not art anymore; it's a prayer." When they returned six months later the son's cancer was in remission. "This is what art can do."

Jones says he isn't out to change the world. "I want to stimulate people's minds — what does this mean to you?" Part of the journey is to connect with people. “I can go OK, put something on paper and pop, feel something. I’m here. I’m just doing it. This is not a choice. It’s what I’m meant to do. At 60 I reinvented myself.“ But,” he adds, “the thing about art is I can be dead but I'm still here."