Double Portrait

John Paul Jones

John Paul Jones studied printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky at Iowa. His early prints were abstractions, cubist in nature, compositions done as a series of planes and hard edged lines and prisms. In the mid 1950s he began to add figurative elements, often emerging out of dark background.

"Double Portrait" was an early example of this work. Jones used etching and aquatint and added soft-ground into which he impressed various textures. He printed these in a dark brown and black ink. His plate was large, almost two by three feet.

Jones noted about this time: "Well, I began to knock off a few prizes. I had some luck at the Brooklyn Museum. Grace Borgenicht (Gallery, in NY) saw some prints and took me on. Here's one thing that finally happened: I found out organization doesn't make great art; it's simply one element. There's got to be a richer combination.

I'd been working too much in my head, too intellectually. These things became sterile. I can break up a space and put it together damn near as good as anybody. It just didn't seem to fulfill anything any more. So I started out using the figure."