Jonathan Alibone

'Frontier, #1'
Charcoal on paper
40cm x 57cm
2023

'Frontier, #2'
Charcoal and crayon on paper
36cm x 57cm
2023

Opening tomorrow! Join us from 6pm onwards for what promises to be a great event, with a wonderful variety of art on display in a number of venues on Stony Stratford high street
www.gallerylive.art

Thrilled to learn my painting 'Untitled (Ghost Road)' has been accepted for this year's RA Summer Exhibition!

'Untitled (Ghost Road)'
Oil and acrylic on canvas
25cm x 35cm
2023

'Flora Rudera, #3 (Flowers Among the Ruins)'
Oil, acrylic and gesso on cradled panel
21cm x 14.5cm
2022

Plastic coral, from child's 'aquatic creature' playset (approx. 7cm x 4.5cm)

This work is a continuation of a series begun in 2021.

"We are conjuring ourselves as ghosts who will haunt the very deep future"... Writes David Farrier, in his brilliant 'Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils'; a sobering exploration of those traces and consequences that will remain to indict and reveal us to distant descendants, or linger (like plastics) long after we have disappeared.

It is both alarming and extraordinary to think that the plastic toy shown, should it find its way into landfill, will become part of sedimentary strata, and of the geological record long after there is anyone left to read it....

Two more works in a series of recent paintings that emerged from photos taken along the coast and in the Rhinogydd mountains of North Wales. Brooding and breathtaking, it is an irresistible landscape of rugged heights and gentle wooded slopes.

Yet in the most remote, wild and beautiful reaches are found the trace and remnant of human activity, enduring evidence of that which is added to the land, or else taken from it.

1. 'A View of The Forest at Dusk, With Rising Smoke'
Oil, acrylic and gesso on cradled panel
30cm x 21cm
2022

2. 'The Church Among The Dunes'
Oil, acrylic and gesso on cradled panel
30cm x 21cm
2022

Two new paintings that emerged from photos taken along the coast and in the Rhinogydd mountains of North Wales. Brooding and breathtaking, it is an irresistible landscape of rugged heights and gentle wooded slopes.

Yet in the most remote, wild and beautiful reaches are found the trace and remnant of human activity, enduring evidence of that which is added to the land, or else taken from it.

'A View of The Valley Floor, With Drovers' Road and Fold'
Oil, acrylic and gesso on cradled panel
21cm x 30cm
2022

'A View of The Distant Slope, With Wall and Remaining Trees'
Oil, acrylic and gesso on cradled panel
21cm x 30cm
2022

'Locale (Emergent Path, #1)' and
'Locale (Emergent Path, #2)'
Both oil, acrylic and gesso on cradled panel
21cm x 30cm
2022

Tracks and traces....

The COVID lockdown of 2020 prompted me to take a great many photos. Unsure what to do with them, they languished for a while. The painting above comes from one such photo: representing the gradual and mediating effects of time and distance, where the shift from documentation opens a space for something mysterious, uncertain, and symbolic to emerge.

'Plinth (In Memory of The Woodsman's Axe)'
Oil and gesso on canvas
25cm x 20cm
2022

Two recent paintings, both studies of small clay sculptures:
'Idol, #1'
Oil, acrylic and gesso on board
21cm x 14.5cm (2022)

'Idol, #2'
Oil, acrylic and gesso on board
21cm x 14.5cm (2022)

'Untitled (Relic #1)'
Oil, acrylic and gesso on board
12.5cm x 18cm
2022

'Cardboard Crown'
Cardboard, cement
2022

Delighted to have my painting 'Untitled (Under The Last Dust)' selected for the RA Summer Exhibition!

'Untitled (Ruin in a Landscape)'
Gouache on board
15cm x 19.5cm
2022

Although I've used gouache before, this is my first real attempt to explore the medium, and to see how it compares with watercolour, oils and acrylics. Here I've painted as though it were oils, probably not ideal when it comes to gouache, but it does make for a satisfying texture, while demanding you be more precise and eeconomical.

The SFSA Drawing Open 2022 - PV this Friday 6pm!
My recent work 'The Antiquary's Faith Wavers...' will be on its first outing and is one of 100 works on show at No Format Gallery

Opening this Friday!

'A View (Of Far Off Things, Half Imagined and Half Remembered)'
39cm x 57cm
Charcoal on paper (2022)

The Minffordd Path to Cader Idris, Gwynedd, Wales (October, 2021)

'A View (Of Things Partially Realised, Remote and Inaccessible)'
Charcoal on paper
34cm x 57cm (2022)

Collapsing and combining reality and artifice, history and myth, and time with scale.

'Ghost Planet'
'Landscape With Relic and Two Moons Rising ( #1)'
'Landscape With Relic and Two Moons Rising ( #2)'
All Indian ink and watercolour on paper

A 'world on which only shadows move'... (Andrew Chaikin).

The torn scraps of cardboard are traces, indexical of our culture's production, of exchange, communication, and journeys to far off places: they have become the shadows of our desires.

'The Ruins at the Edge of Enchantment'
Charcoal on paper
34cm x 58cm (2022)

Three new works, indebted to the eerie and haunting imagery of the 2020 film 'Last and First Men', the cinematic debut of Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.

Last and First Men is inspired by British author William Olaf Stapledon's 1930 science fiction novel of the same name, the visual imagery lingering shots of the concrete memorials and monuments found in the former Yugoslavia, made profoundly strange and otherworldly in this remarkable film:

'Two billion years in the future, humanity finds itself on the verge of extinction. Almost all that is left in the world are lone and surreal monuments, beaming their message into the wilderness.'

'Untitled (Under The Last Dust)'
Oil and acrylic on canvas
20cm x 25cm
2021

By degrees, returning to oil painting. Here revisiting former techniques and motifs in a new work on canvas.

The title is borrowed from 'Endgame' by Samuel Beckett: "A world where all would be silent and still and each thing in its last place, under the last dust."

Happy Halloween!

'The Old Whateley Place', new to the market - great opportunity for first time buyers!
A fixer-upper. Retains many original features...

Mixed media, dimensions - who knows?
October 31, 2021

'The Secret Country'
Watercolour and Indian ink on paper
14cm x 21cm
2021

Delighted to have two works selected for Wells Art Contemporary 2021. Out of 3,500 submissions, my pieces are two of 91 shortlisted by WAC selectors, Amanda Loomes, Will Nash and Jonathan Yeo.

Images are from the WAC2021 virtual exhibition - www.wellsartcontemporary.co.uk/home to view (my work can be seen in Room 2).
After its online debut, the WAC 2021 physical exhibition will be returning to Wells Cathedral from 28 August to 26 September (opening next week!).

1. 'A Relick of Antiquary', Indian ink and watercolour on paper, 12 x 17cm (2020).
2. 'A View of an Artificial Curiosity, With Evidence of Prior Excavation', Indian ink and watercolour on paper, 12 x 17cm (2020).

'A Species of W**d that is observ'd to flourish only upon the Bones of the Dead'.
Indian ink, watercolour and coffee on paper.
15 x 22cm (2021).

Plastic (polyethylene) aquarium plant, approx. 130mm x 110mm

Not so long ago I discovered the term 'forever chemicals' - an apt nickname for PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances - harmful compounds used in the manufacture of a wide range of everyday products.

Forever chemicals lurk in the body: they cannot be destroyed, nor broken down in any natural or meaningful way, and will linger for thousands of years.

"We are conjuring ourselves as ghosts who will haunt the very deep future" (David Farrier, 'Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils').

'The Only Plant Observ'd to thrive Among the Ruins and Waste'.
Indian ink, watercolour and coffee on paper.
22 x 15cm (2021).

Plastic (polyethylene) aquarium plant, approx. 210mm x 130mm

"We are conjuring ourselves as ghosts who will haunt the very deep future", writes David Farrier in his brilliant 'Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils'; a sobering exploration of those traces and consequences that will remain to indict and reveal us to distant descendants, or linger (like plastics) long after we have disappeared.

'A Specimen of the only Life found to endure in this most scarr'd and barren of Landscapes'.
Indian ink, watercolour and coffee on paper.
13 x 22cm (2021).
Plastic (polyethylene) aquarium plant, approx. 130mm x 100mm

"We are conjuring ourselves as ghosts who will haunt the very deep future"...

Re-reading the brilliant 'Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils' by David Farrier; a sobering exploration of those traces and consequences that will remain to indict and reveal us to distant descendants, or linger (like plastics) long after we have disappeared.

Simon Streather's insightful review of current exhibition 'Model / Maquette' on Artlyst.
Very happy to have three works included in this terrific show. A big thank you to curators Alexander Hinks and Juliette Losq for making it all happen.
'Model / Maquette' runs until 23 May

Model Maquette Scale Illusion Space at The Cello Factory Simon Streather The exhibition 'Model Maquette' arrives in a protracted time of pandemic fright, a time when most people's worlds have literally shrunk.

Thrilled to have been invited to show among such a terrific line-up of artists!
Curated by Juliette Losq and Alexander Hinks, 'Model / Maquette: Scale, Illusion and Space' runs May 7 - 23 at The Cello Factory, London https://www.thecellofactory.com/whats-on

'The artists in this exhibition all deal with questions of scale. Rather than focusing exclusively on the small-scale, some enlarge the miniature format to the gigantic. Others use the maquette as the basis to create tiny, self-contained worlds of reference. Perhaps the appeal of models and miniatures lies not in our ability to control them but in the fantasy of being overwhelmed by the world around us. Conversely, it might lie in the fascination with spaces that, through their impossibly small size, force use to navigate and understand them purely perceptually. The use of models and maquettes enables this engagement with scale and questioning of what is ‘real’ and what is illusory.' – Juliette Losq

'Raising the Dead'
Watercolour on paper
16x11.5cm
2021

'Each of them rescued the past in order to give life to the present' (Philip Marsden, 'Rising Ground').

The latest in a series of small watercolour paintings begun during the first lockdown back in 2020. Each mixes dioramas of cardboard and cement with found photos of archaeological excavations, collapsing and combining reality and artifice, history and myth, time and scale.

Since it's been a while since my last post, on the happy (but cautious) occasion of coming out of lockdown, here's an example of work produced in recent months:

'A View of Ruins, which Legend, and various Scholars attest, are the Work of the Giants of Albion', after William Stukeley.
Indian ink, watercolour and coffee on paper, 13x22cm (2021).
Collapsing and combining reality and artifice, history and myth, and time with scale.

Great compliment. Thank you Prosaic!

'Landscape (With Angular Unconformity)'
watercolour on paper
19 x 27cm
by Jonathan Alibone (2020)

It is the first time we've featured Jonathan's work and hopefully not the last because this is such a beautiful piece.

Follow Jonathan on Instagram at .alibone to see more of his stunning, thoughtful artwork

Happy New Year to all our followers and the artists we've had the pleasure of working with.