“The owl of Minerva,” the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel once mused, “spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.” I think of these words often when looking at the paintings of Matt Jones, whose images of owls, moths, nocturnal flowers, and fruiting fungi, suggest a crepuscular world stirring to life. 

In this benighted moment, as the climate warms and democracy wanes, it would be understandable if Jones retreated further into the shadows in search of wisdom.  And yet in his latest paintings we find instead that “morning has broken like the first morning,” in the words of the hymn popularized by Cat Stevens.  Rays of Edenic sunshine stream through Jones’ canvases, sending wakeful eyeballs scuttling and alighting on balding pates with fresh inspiration.

A mystical energy pulses through these canvases, as if their unique images have been waiting to burst into reality.  They have a hard-won immediacy, a rudimentary style born of deep study that reminds me of Philip Guston, whose own highly personal iconography erupted in scores of small, seemingly crude paintings.  When an early critic took special aim at one of Guston’s works, calling the artist a “stumblebum,” Guston reacted with genuine surprise, reflecting “I thought I had put in everything I knew about painting.” 

Jones has similarly poured his full knowledge of painting—including Guston’s—into these works, which mark the dawning of a new period in his life and work.  They are created in the aftermath of his mother’s death, and a formative period from the birth of his first child Arah (A) to his second, Zelde (Z).  The new alphabet embodied in these works tellingly numbers eighteen, the numerical value of the word chai, or life, in Hebrew.

The Parsonage is proud to exhibit these works in the historic lands of the Wabanaki, the People of the Dawnland.