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View more works by David Jonason
The vast cloud-filled skies over Gila Wilderness, Abiquiu, El Bosque del Apache, Ghost Ranch, and other iconic destinations throughout the Southwest are the subject of a new paintings by David Jonason.
The works represent an exciting departure for Jonason, acclaimed for his cubist-inspired interpretations of architecture. These include Modernist designs of bungalows in Pasadena, city landmarks of Portland, Oregon and most recently the churches of New Mexico. In this latest series, Jonason continues to explore the cubist visual language he initially developed for architecture to paint the natural complexity of landscapes and cloud forms.
“The big, simple volumes of Modernist architecture have much in common with the massive clouds, mesas, bluffs and boulders of the Southwest,” he says. “I think tall, billowing cumulonimbus clouds sometimes have the feeling of heroic, tall buildings.”
Jonason notes that for centuries, landscape painters have represented cloud-filled skies in their art. “Clouds always give a scene a sense of drama no matter what is happening on the ground,” he says. The artist, who lived for 10 years in New Mexico, says the broad, open landscapes of the region provide opportunities to focus on the bold, simple shapes of rock and sky – devoid of “fussy details.”
“In the process of painting and intense observation, I detect unseen patterns in the rocks and clouds and try to bring these patterns to the surface,” he says. “There’s a saying here – ‘In New Mexico you live in the sky.’ – and that’s where everything happens.”
But Jonason has now turned his eye toward landscapes, and today his images of clouds hovering gloriously over architectural landmarks remind us of the billowing, the looming, the sense of the skies filling with massive grey clouds against the dramatic orange/red glow of the sunset.
“It has been a challenge to translate the Cubist language I developed for architecture to the complexity of landscapes and cloud forms,” Jonason says of his latest exhibition. “As an artist, this really is a nice change of pace for me.”
His choice of locations was prompted by memories of living in New Mexico; Jonason developed a keen appreciation and awareness of the sky spanning high above the flat landscape.
“I don’t like wispy, ethereal clouds. My favorites are bulky, powerful shapes with volume that make them similar to architecture,” he says.
"I like billowing cumulonimbus (clouds) a lot. They remind me a lot of tall buildings -- tall and dense; they have a big, heroic quality. Architecture is all about volume and I apply that to the landscapes. At the same time, I'm trying to get the spiritual, transcendental quality I feel in landscapes." Jonason notes that for centuries, landscape painters have represented cloud-filled skies in their art.
“Clouds always give a scene a sense of drama no matter what is happening on the ground,” he says.
Jonason’s innovative style -- which he describes as “Cubism Lite” – employs slashes of light and color to emphasize the architectural designs, while integrating elements of both Cubism and Realism into clean lines, strong forms, and bold uses of color.
His artistic influences include Cubism, Art Deco, architectural-renderer Hugh Ferriss, and especially the works of the Precisionist Painters, including Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth. This style of painting, developed in the early 20th Century, reduced elemental structures and forms and depicted them through a combination of abstractionism and realism, with often sharply defined geometrical forms.
Prior to his career in Fine Art, Jonason was an accomplished commercial artist. He was represented in the 1980s by PushPin, New Yorks’ trend-setting design and illustration agency. There, he produced coveted illustrations for Fortune 500 advertising and editorial clients.
He also worked in television, designing and supervising the production of graphics segments for “ABC World New Tonight,” “Nightline,” and “Good Morning America,” among others.
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