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LUCY JONES’S raw, wild landscapes and provocative portraits are distinguished by expressive brushwork and vibrant, undiluted colour.
There’s a passionate energy in every brushstroke and a bewitching chromatic rhapsody in this free exhibition of her work at the Flowers Gallery in London.
Jones savours the Shropshire Hills with evident gusto and much affection, confidently rendering the changing seasonal moods with formidable panache and the colour palette and contrasting textures of Too Much Yellow, Looking into a World, Haven Approaches or Fields in the Pink make for stunning landscapes.
The “close-up” paintings, where shapes are almost indiscernible and verge on abstraction, reflect a joie de vivre that’s laced with playful irreverence, as in What’s in this Puddle or A Slow Sluggish River.
Her vistas draw the viewer in on an aesthetic adventure that remorselessly challenges convention — these are canvases that both challenge and reassure.
Among the portraits, Tom Shakespeare: Intellect, with Wheels has a compositional bravery and in-your-face subversion of conventional perceptions of masculinity, while the self-portrait With a Handicap Like Yours… is a superbly defiant portrayal of femininity, ageing and disability.
These paintings are both personal and political in the way they address the fragility of the body and society’s perception of the “different.”
This is a must-see exhibition and an intriguing prelude to Awkward Beauty, Jones’s major retrospective in August at the Attenborough Arts Centre in Leicester, which will coincide with the launch of a book with the same title.
Runs until July 6. opening times: flowersgallery.com.