Recently, the Landau Art Gallery located in the Robsham Center for the Arts hosted a new series of artworks by spotlight artist Robin Jones on October 14, and is scheduled to run until November 22. Jones is the second artist of the 2024-2025 shows after the previous artist, photographer Nico Carver.
Born in Arlington, Massachusetts, Jones knew she wanted to become an artist very early on in her childhood, becoming interested in learning a variety of art styles as she explored different mediums. Today, her artwork centers on colorful, vibrant contrast with paint and ink, often including aspects of nature. Jones’s paintings have also been displayed in the Gateway Gallery in Brookline. Additionally, in 2019, Jones was chosen to make a painted mural in her hometown of Arlington by the Arlington Chamber of Commerce.
Many of her paintings in the Landau Art Gallery currently depict different animals, flowers, and nature locations. The largest painting is at the center of the gallery, titled “Jungle Blues” (2024). It is a 36 x 48-inch painting consisting of acrylic paint on a large canvas, and it depicts a bright blue leopard staring through the leaves in a forest background. Jones uses the vivid contrast of blue, green, and brown to emphasize the leopard as the subject of the artwork and uses contrasting shades of blue within the leopard to provide definition and subtlety in the leopard’s fur patterns. Jones also utilizes minuscule details in the green leaves surrounding the leopard, having thick black ink designs sprawl across the bright green leaves to provide depth.
In another painting, Jones focuses on the zebra, in “We All Have Colorful Stripes” (2024), a 16 x 12-inch painting, also with acrylic on canvas. Like the leopard, Jones uses vivid unnatural colors to define the characteristics of the animal’s face, using a spectrum of rainbow colors from red to purple in the zebra’s stripes. Although the piece is a much smaller one than “Jungle Blues,” Jones’ use of striking color contrast and a wide variety of colors helps the painting pop out on the wall.
Overall, each of Jones’ paintings consists of unique subject matters, and the gallery itself provides a selection that has a wide variety of color uses and sizes. Jones has additional artwork of roosters, peacocks, bluejays, hummingbirds, as well as other paintings of non-living things like daffodils, roses, sunflowers, and tulips. Jones also makes sure that the title of each painting has a fun tone and meaning, including “Maintain Balance,” “Keep Reaching,” and “Rise and Shine, It’s a Beautiful Day.”
As the Landau Gallery is still open with all of Jones’ artwork currently on display, students can visit the Robsham Center if they wish to view the gallery. For more information on Jones’ paintings, make sure to visit https://gatewayarts.org/artists/robin-jones/.
