Jeff Jones, sometimes referenced as Jeffrey Catherine Jones, was a US artist that worked in the 1960s and 1970s, doing comics and fantasy art. Although not as famous as other of his contemporaries, he was a greatly talented and respected illustrator.
He was born Jeffrey Durwood Jones in Atlanta, Georgia, on 10th January 1944, the son of a US Army soldier. He spent his youth in Atlanta and then enrolled in Georgia State College: there he met his future wife, Mary Louise Alexander, and the two married in 1966, having a daughter, Julianna, the following year. Jones graduated in that same period, in 1967, as a geologist. His great interest, though, was art and soon he left Georgia with his family and moved to New York City where his talent was immediately recognized: in that same year he was nominated for the Hugo Award to the best fan artist. He started drawing comics and then covers for sci-fi and fantasy books and his career immediately took off. But things were not easy for the family, and in the early 1970s he and his wife divorced.
From 1972 to 1975 the National Lampoon gave him a full page for a strip titled Idyl. |
| I wish I was there (1969) |
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| Ceremony (1970) |
In 1975, Jones joined the Studio, a collective workspace in Manhattan shared with Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith and Michael Kaluta. This was one of the first experiments of shared space for artists, which ensured their independence from corporate constraints, and was soon imitated by many other groups.
In 1979 Jones left the Studio, after publishing a volume with their collective work. In 1980 he received a full page strip in Heavy Metal titled I’m Age.
Yet at that time Jones was already developing an interest in Expressionism and gradually losing interest in comics.
Since childhood, Jones had not felt comfortable being a man and he secretly wished to be a woman. In 1998 he confronted these issue and started hormone replacement therapy and legally changed his gender, taking the name of Jeffrey Catherine Jones. The transition was not easy and in 2001 Jones suffered a nervous breakdown which brought to the loss of her studio and home. It took three years to recover, but in 2004 she resumed painting and drawing again.
Jones died on 19th May 2011 from severe emphysema and bronchitis.
Jones was a master of styles and during her career she experimented with many of them, notably pencils, ink, oil and watercolours. Reputedly Frank Frazetta called her “the greatest living painter”.
Jones’s style was heavily influenced by Frazetta in subject and form: she was fond of drawing naked bodies of warriors and amazons and great beasts, applying heavy light and shadow and using simple, monochromatic backgrounds. But Jones’s art was somewhat lighter, more playful and positive, especially on his women. He once declared “I am a romantic and a painter and I love women… The female form just reflects light so simply and beautifully,”.
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