Alice Jones: Everything Within Us Remembers This

I work as a gardener. The garden, a 25x25 yard fenced-in plot, sits within a larger clearing dotted with apple trees and ringed by goldenrod. It is far too big for me (the sole worker) to keep up with, so a number of areas grow as they are, uninfluenced by my spring sketches and desires of order. Through the hours and years spent here, I’ve developed an interest in the balance– and the struggle– between cultivated and wild. Between natural order and randomness, established and emergent. Between predator and prey, pest and plant, harmony and discord. With all the bright, abundant life there is quiet, abundant death, equally.  I found it all here. 

I keep these relationships and dynamics of push and pull in mind as I approach this body of work, holding interest in how those same tensions play out in the process of painting.

Approaching the paintings in this body of work affords me the chance to be closer, to reflect 

I approach my paintings similarly. I am not too meticulous- I plan little, typically guided by the medium and how it wants to mark and move- much is left to in the moment intuition and decisions, drawing on memories and imagination woven with observation and experience. 

Through painting I deepen my access to the landscape- a realm I cannot exist in as my mere presence disturbs, unwilds, humanizes any space I enter. The garden is the gateway that provides me glimmers, while always still reminding me of my own limitations and complicated position to the natural world. 

(as my unfortunate but undeniable human presence disturbs and unwilds any place just by setting foot)

I approach my paintings similarly. I am not too meticulous- I plan little, typically guided by the medium and how it wants to mark and move- much is left to in the moment intuition and decisions, drawing on memories and imagination woven with observation and experience.