our art: GEORGE JONES
George Jones’ Day Job
An artist’s lifelong passion becomes his full-time pursuit
STORY & PHOTOS BY MEL W. RHODES
SEPTEMBER 2015
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
W
ith a name like George Jones, a guy
would have to expect a little ribbing
now and then. Right?
“I’ve had that once or twice,” North
Plano artist George Jones said with a
chuckle. “They say I look pretty good for a
dead guy.”
Jones is a guitar picker; he even named
a son “Gibson,” but his passion is making
large-scale canvas art, particularly with a
palette knife.
“Right now [my art] is probably 85
percent knife work,” said Jones. “I’m
known as a colorful animal knife painter.”
His artwork currently hangs in 20plus galleries across the country. Some 4
million viewers watched him complete
a painting of a cow a couple of years
ago when he appeared on Good Morning Texas. Working from scratch (with no
preliminary sketch to follow), he finished
the piece during the one-hour segment,
covering the entire 36” x 48” canvas. On
occasion he makes it out west to Parker
County for the local shows, the last time
about five months ago.
Jones said his style incorporates “big
chunks of paint that are very fresh.” Experience has taught him how to manipulate
the oils with a knife, how to create hard
edges and 3-D-like depth. Upon close
inspection of his work, one sees the movement of these chunks of pigmented oil, the
vibrant blending that imparts a rugged yet
somehow sophisticated quality or feel to
the pieces, the horses and longhorns, the
florals, wildlife and landscapes that cover
his canvases. He has been honing his art
and style for over half a century.
“I got sent to the principal’s office in
the first grade for drawing the Beatles [in
class],” he recalled. “I was 6 years old.
That was 52 years ago. [The Beatles] had
just come onto the scene, they’d just been
on the Ed Sullivan Show.”
During those heady days of the British
Invasion when across-the-Big-Pond music
went viral before the word “viral” slipped
into our common parlance, maternal cousin Carol, four years his senior, thought the
mop-headed Fab Four were pretty cool.
An artist herself, she had a huge impact on
Jones’ budding art career. At 10 he sold his
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