Collectors Love: Laura Jones

Selling out a show is no uncommon occurrence for Laura Jones, who will generally see all her works snapped up before they even make it to the floor. Music for Trees, presented at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne in August 2022, was no exception.

“Collectors love painting, and Laura is a wonderful painter,” says gallery director Sophie Gannon. “Her competence with the medium is well acknowledged, and yet she still pushes herself and her practice.”

The impetus for Music for Trees came from Jones’ enduring concern about the threats facing the natural world, as well as her more recently established monotype practice. “I’m interested in the process of painting, the repetition of movements and getting into that deep focus – so creating monotypes and resolving an image really quickly interests me,” she says.

For the exhibition, Jones drew on the approach she had learned for creating monotypes, and applied it to painting. “She is an artist not afraid to try new things – and that’s a big contributor to her success,” says Gannon.

While previous works have confronted the climate crisis head-on, with depictions of coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef and the changing landscape of Antarctica, Music for Trees took a less literal approach. “It was more a show about intimacy and emotion… it was almost like a poem or a love song,” she says.

The works are characterised by an electrifying use of non-naturalistic colour, with patches of lurid neon green and hot pink injecting an uncommon dynamism into still life floral arrangements and landscapes.

Jones has an upcoming residency at Tweed Regional Gallery in early 2023.