Article published in the Royal Gazette, October 6, 2004

The Show of the Year

The opening last Friday of the Bermuda Society of Arts show of new work by Jonah Jones and Chris Marson can only be described as a mob scene. Some 150 people streamed into the gallery as the doors opened and a line of hopeful buyers formed within minutes and lasted for almost an hour before the rush eased. Red stickers appeared everywhere adding still more colour to an already colourful show.
The rush to buy was justified. This is without a doubt the art show of the year. If there was a downside at all I would say that it was a pity that the artists had agreed between themselves that Chris Marson would only show watercolours. It isn’t that his watercolours aren’t superb. They are. It is just that recently he has been expanding his talent into other media and doing equally well. I would have liked to have seen some.
That tiny quibble aside, the show is huge. There are over 100 paintings in the gallery and the first impression is breath taking. Colour dominates. The two artists are friends and often paint together, but it is still remarkable that their paintings hang together so well as their styles are widely divergent. Jonah Jones could be described as an artist who started out with boundless enthusiasm and energy and learned to control his medium without losing any of his original delight in colour, light, movement and sheer excitement.
Chris Marson’s artistic journey has been in exactly the opposite direction. Always meticulous, he has refined and reduced his painting style to the point at which the tiniest touch of his brush is made to express much the same delight in what he sees as does Jonah’s exuberance. The amazing thing about this show is how well his spare, refined watercolours hang interspersed amongst the almost brash oils of Jonah Jones.
‘Winter Waves’ is a rare departure from his usual serenity. In it enormous energy is expressed with the artist©ˆs usual understatement, here in a minimal, almost cubist treatment which surfaces again in ‘Skyline’, a quarry scene. ‘Oxford in Somerset’ is another departure from his more usual restful, misty style. It is radiantly sunny, almost vivid, but nevertheless as spare and reserved in treatment as ever. ‘Rain off the Point’ particularly appealed to me for its remarkably reductionist success in the portrayal of power in weather.
Amongst Mr. Marson’s 43 paintings these are mentioned because they seem to me to be pushing a little on his usual conservative boundaries. For those who admire his work there is a feast in this show. If I had to award a “best in show” ribbon I think it would have to go to ‘Kings Point Island’, a supreme example of his painting style that immediately catches they eye on entering the gallery, despite being in a distant corner.
His ‘Ely’s Harbour’ enjoys a rare touch of bright colour in orange buoys. It was possibly painted in tandem with Jonah Jones who has a set of four near abstracts with orange buoys in reflective water as the dominating subject.There are a number of other scenes in the repertoire of both artists that may have been painted in tandem. Cleverly hung together are ‘Clouds, Mangrove Bay’, a charming oil hung between two Marson’s, ‘Wet Morning’ and ‘Mangrove Bay’. It might have been fun to have more hanging together in the show, but it’s fun to pick them out.
The dominating feature of the show is Jonah Jones’ ‘Newport’ series. There are 12 in all, including two studies. They are festive, lively, full of colour, full of people, full of ocean race preparation, but they look painted in a hurry. The boats don’t always sit in the water as they should, the people aren’t always anatomically acceptable. These are small quibbles, but they are things that make many viewers uneasy even if they don’t quite know why.
It isn’t that the artist always has trouble getting his boats correctly in the water; Jonah Jones is one of the best. In ‘Evening Ferry’, a scene of one of our sturdy little harbour ferries passing Hodsdon’s Dock, the ferry surges through the water, accelerating after determining there was no customer waiting on the dock – just as if it were real. With a cool post-sunset evening light (Mr. Jones’ light almost always comes from the right) this less colourful work is one of the artist’s best. In his wonderfully gold lit series ‘Stretching out the Weekend’ and ‘Sunlit Boat’ all the boats solidly displace the water in which they live. The light in these series absolutely glows.
The show is relieved from being endlessly Bermudian by two series done abroad, one in Wyoming, one in France. My impression was that Mr. Jones was much happier in the Rockies than he was in France. His Wyoming series catches the spirit of the country and its own unique light wonderfully well whereas France seems to have done the almost impossible and subdued the ebullient Jonah spirit. For me the high points of the Jones collection were two small studies of weather and named accordingly. Summer clouds, water, light and rain are the subject of both; one is punctuated with tiny sailboats in the distance.
Sadly they were not bought as a pair. Another less colourful series were the six ‘Kings Point Moods’, the same view in six different weathers and lights. I particularly liked (and bought) #2, almost without colour, spare and evocative, and the nearest Jones came to Marson in style.
Certainly the show of the year, this brilliant, colourful display of two of Bermuda’s major talents must not be missed. Despite the heavy buying at the opening there are still plenty of excellent works available. Fortunately there are still two weeks in which to see it.

Andrew Trimingham