Jean Sbarra Jones | What Dreams May Come.
08.02.2019 - 09.30.2019
Art Opening & Artist’s Reception: Friday, August 2, 5-8pm
Art & Wine: Friday, September 6, 5-8pm
Jean Sbarra Jones.
A turquoise and lavender velvet elf costume that I wore in children’s theatre sparked my interest in costume. Years later, as an art student in graduate school, I collected vintage clothing to dress hired models used in narrative figure paintings. After school, the dress without the figure became my subject. I brought it out into the landscape where it hung on trees. I draped it over rusted fishing boats. Several years ago, while on a boat with my husband, a purple satin party dress fell in the ocean. The accidental image created exquisite shape, texture and movement of light on water and fabric. This inspired my latest series of paintings. The dress revealed itself as a metaphor. A dreamlike narrative, more poetry than prose transpired. The worn and well-traveled dress, mysterious and fragile is renewed by light and water.
Jean is an award-winning artist, holding a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Boston University College of Art. She has exhibited widely, received grants for residencies and been published most recently by Poets/Artists, AcrylicWorks5 and Studio Visit Magazine.
She currently teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work has been selected to be included in exhibitions by numerous leaders in the art world such as Alan Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and Clifford Ackley, curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Jean's paintings have also been juried and chosen by well-known artists such as William Bailey, Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold and Donald Sultan. Her work is included in many private collections, including the estate of the late Kenneth Noland, a well-known 1960’s color field painter. Jean speaks publicly about her work in relationship to her personal life experiences and faith, which illuminates more thoroughly the unique and powerful meaning embedded in her paintings.