Wyche's Woman

John Paul Jones

"Wyche's Woman" was painted on a panel in 1964 and has a label on the verso from the Felix Landau Gallery in Los Angeles, his dealer at that time. It is framed in the original linen liner and gold strip frame.

Iowa-born artist John Paul Jones participated in the horrific WWII Battle of Okinawa. This experience informed his artwork for the rest of his life.

In the book "John Paul Jones: The Pursuit of Beauty's Perfect Proof" essayist Susan Landauer comments about the imagery on page 22:

"Still, while we know Jones appreciated the sensibility of Symbolism, it is essential to recognize that after his shift to the figure his approach became increasingly unpremeditated and instinctive. As early as 1963, he acknowledged:

'I find it increasingly difficult as time goes on to have theories about my work - I simply try to live in the work as fully as possible.'

The melancholy and despondancy of his art expresses emotive content that, as he insisted himself, necessarily came from within. What are we to make, then, of the isolated figures simultaneously evolving from and dissolving into the shadows or disappearing like wisps of smoke in the air? What did he mean when he told Time magazine in 1962 that in his paintings 'The figure is woven into the fabric of the surface', giving only the elusive explanation that his 'figures are hinged onto this darkness the way people are hinged onto life?'"