"When I use a roller it has a motion and a weight that’s specific to the tool, and an extension of my body. I want it to be physical. It’s a form of drawing, and it’s also working to cover plenty of process history. I’m consciously using my biography in this new work, I’ve been revisiting my past and these paintings reinterpret and re-contextualize images from earlier pieces as a way to begin... I like that the roller signifies a kind of erasure, a fresh start, and also speaks to all the construction that goes into my work, while still functioning as a tool for gesture.” – Mary Jones
Alba Amicorum collaborator Mary Jones' exhibition "Proxima b" is on view at John Molloy Gallery, New York, through November 26, 2016.
Proxima b is the newly discovered planet visible to us only from wobbles of color that portend the possibility of life. Mary Jones uses this title as a metaphor for her new abstract paintings, a way to describe this optimistic possibility, which in her painting might be the tension between improvisation and craft. Using bright, bold colors, the paintings vividly enmesh multiple layers and directions. The paintings are made through an interplay of constructive and destructive means, and with a variety of tools and materials. Jones begins with pouring, sanding, and brushing the canvas, and ends working over the surface with a paint roller, which simultaneously covers and exposes notions of gesture, and traces an archaeology through movement. In new collaged paintings, repurposed stencils from the artist’s studio or bits of feathered wallpaper place organic and sculptural forms in balance. The results are a beautiful blend of abstraction and representation. New explorations, as it were, to places and planets which speak to the idea of possibility.
Mary wears her own collaboration - an Alba Amicorum scarf "Microcosm" (edition of 25) - as a skirt. More of Jones' collaboration in on view at AlbaAmicorum.com