Mark Russell Jones is a painter living and working in Los Angeles. Born in California, he received his BFA in painting with distinction from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, California. During his time there, he explored a multi-disciplinary approach to his painting through in-depth studies in art history, photography, drawing, design, and printmaking. He was awarded the Vivian Isabel Bolton scholar Award and the Peter Chapman scholar award for painting.

Employing his skills in photography and drawing, Jones’ process explores both mediums in his work. Hovering between abstraction and representation, his approach to painting is informed by his interests in geography, light and environment. To further explore this aspect of his work Jones has lived and worked in Milan, Paris, Madrid, Auckland, Tokyo, and Osaka. In addition, he has made a number of excursions covering other parts of Europe, the middle east, Russia, China and the Caribbean. Functioning much like a documentary filmmaker, Jones documents the varied terrain by making black and white photographs and drawings that reflect his response to each place. Upon his return to the studio he examines his findings through an editing of the material which are ultimately realized as paintings. The work considers spatial perspectives while contemplating its interaction with such elements as air, fire, water and earth. The end results are large scale oil paintings echoing the sensibility and following in the lineage of Turner, Rothko, and Richter.

Jones has exhibited since 1996 with exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Texas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Palm Springs. His work has been reviewed in California Home+Design, the Santa Barbara News-Press and the Chautauquan Daily in Chautauqua, New York where he received the VACI partners Award. His work is in private collections in New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Japan and throughout the United States.