Nick Jones

Landscape, abstraction, colour and light have long been the dominant themes of Nick’s painting. Taking inspiration from the countryside around his Somerset home, from visits to the Lake District and Scotland and dreams of places further afield, he has sought to evoke the world of nature, of hills, mountains, water, skies, trees, and above all, light. Over time these ‘abstracted landscapes’ slowly became more simplified – increasingly pure celebrations of colour and light. Between 2014 and 2017 Nick made a number of visits to Finnish Lapland culminating in over sixty paintings attempting to evoke the other-worldly beauty of the Aurora Borealis.

More recently Nick has been working on a series of Arctic paintings. He is fascinated by how in the Arctic such a rich and varied beauty can be created from the simplest of elements: ice, rock, water and light. His appointment in 2018 as the Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute’s Arctic Artist in Residence provided him with a wonderful opportunity to immerse himself in the light and landscape of the region and was the catalyst for a significant new body of work.

In 2022 the Royal Geographical Society presented Nick with the Cherry Kearton Medal and Award for his polar paintings. Recent recipients include iconic photographer Steve McCurry, artists Tacita Dean and Andy Goldsworthy, and going further back BBC Planet Earth producer Alistair Fothergill and Sir David Attenborough.