Jon Jones

In his show-stopping collection, Silver Screen, figurative artist Jon Jones pays tribute to some of the most memorable moments in film from the last 70 years.

Depicting scenes from classic westerns and musicals, gritty crime thrillers, coming-of-age dramas and touching modern romances, the collection includes four signed limited editions and a selection of superb original works.

The Peaky Blinders gang from Stephen Knight’s acclaimed BBC drama may be bad to the bone, but artist Jon Jones’ portraits of characters from the series on a 50-metre-long portrait wall in Birmingham’s Hill Street have helped to raise £10,000 for the city’s Children’s Hospital Charity.

Featuring names like Thomas Shelby, Alfie Solomons and Polly Gray, the public art display has already been highlighted by the BBC, ITV and Metro newspaper, with the show's creator, Steven Knight, calling it "vivid and brilliant". 

Chief executive of Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charity, Mark Brider, says: “We’re incredibly thankful to our great friends at Castle Fine Art and Central BID Birmingham for supporting us in this unique way. Jon Jones’s portrayal of Birmingham’s infamous gangsters is visually stunning and we’d urge everyone to come and see his artwork next time they’re in the city centre.

Jon’s passion for painting is unquenchable, and if something grabs his imagination, he gets right on with making an image. ”If I have an urge to paint something I will drop everything and paint it,” he says. “Once I’ve started working on something I focus all of my energy on that, and often the person I’m painting will help me.”

Although Jon is celebrated for his portraits of Birmingham criminals, his influences are much wider. When he was very young, he was creating portraits of John Inman from Are You Being Served?; from another end of the cultural scale he is a big fan of John Wayne. “In difficult situations, such as during the Covid epidemic, I always think, ‘What would John Wayne do?’.”

As an artist, Jon is influenced by painters including Rembrandt and Lucian Freud. “I love Freud, but at the same time I know he has a formula to all of his pieces. His work Is beautiful and I want to have that magic. I’m fascinated by painting eyes – I always start by painting the left eye in a portrait – and I always want to move people emotionally in my work. My dad told me: ‘Don’t strive for perfection; you’ll never reach it’, and I completely agree with him. Once I’ve done the best I can, I can walk away from a painting”.

As Jon is working in his fascinating studio, full of treasures bought from car boot sales, he uses his work as time to think. “Painting is a journey and a therapy,” he says. “I never used to believe in art therapy, but now I do. When I’m in the studio, it’s just me in silence, thinking about things and that time is an escape for me.

“I can never imagine not painting. Even if it wasn’t my job, I’d still be doing it.”

Jon Jones latest collection of original oil portraits, In My Life, named after the moving song by The Beatles, sees him get more personal with his choice of subject and showcase his unquenchable passion for painting. These works are a culmination of Jon’s artistic influences, including pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, whose work was influenced by popular advertising and the comic book style of the early 1960s;  street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, with his raw gestural style of painting with graffiti-like images and scrawled text.

Returning to the roots of his early works, many of Jon’s In My Life paintings feature text, whether it be a stencil with a bold statement or just a scribble about a thought or something poignant that day. Each piece of text relates to the person he has captured in a unique way.

The new originals and limited editions, part of the Made in Birmingham collection, are a mix of Jon’s memories of growing up in the city, his love of history and of the real Peaky Blinders gangs from there, whom he has studied in detail, and some of the many other figures who have captured his imagination.

Made in Birmingham is a collection that not only reflects the artist's own identity and background, but also the nature of his invigorating artworks- some currently on a huge exciting display outside Birmingham New Street Station. From his memories of the school run to his time at university, two brand new limited edition artworks and a selection of originals draw upon the history of Birmingham and that of the artist.

For the artist's Summer 2021 release, he has mixed fictional scenes with historical research for four haunting new limited edition artworks. Like the smoky streets of Small Heath, where the gang ruled through violence and corruption, Jon's works are cloaked in shadow. The contrast between light and dark - also known as chiaroscuro - was recreated using the giclée printing process, which involves spraying microscopic dots of pigment-based ink to closely emulate the incredible detail of the original painting. Following this, the works were hand-embellished with a special combination of varnishes and gels to give them texture and depth.

As a teenager, Jon Jones was drawn to the darker side of history. Shunning playing football with his friends, he instead investigated his local pub in Kings Heath, Birmingham, where the landlord regaled historic tales of its use as a mortuary. This macabre curiosity is weaved into his newest collection of limited edition giclée on canvas prints, which depict the infamous Peaky Blinders gang.

Incorporating his research alongside the curator of the West Midlands Police Museum, his Autumn Winter 2020 series captures the murky underworld of the early 20th century. The monochromatic portraits are presented in striking dark frames, which elevate the shadows and add a haunting new dimension.