Jonas Wood Animal Prints
In his boldly colored, graphic works — including paintings, drawings, and prints — Jonas Wood combines art historical references with images of the objects, interiors, and people that comprise the fabric of his life. Translating the three-dimensional world around him into flat color and line, he confounds expectations of scale and vantage point.
"You could call [my work] a visual diary or even a personal history," Wood says. "I’m not going to paint something that doesn’t have anything to do with me. Of all of the possible things I could paint, the thing that interests me is something that I can get close enough to in order to paint it honestly."
Born in Boston, Wood grew up surrounded by the art collection of his grandfather, featuring the work of artists such as Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder, Jim Dine, Robert Motherwell, Larry Rivers, and Andy Warhol. He received a BA from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York, in 1999, majoring in psychology and minoring in studio art, then attended the University of Washington, Seattle, where he received an MFA in painting and drawing in 2002. During his student years, he explored making collage-like works based on montaged photographs that he took of himself, his friends, and their surroundings. These early photo-based paintings possess a darker and more volatile energy that is not as immediately evident in the work Wood is known for today.
Shortly after art school, Wood moved to Los Angeles, where he worked for the painter Laura Owens for a few years. Wood currently shares a studio with artist Shio Kusaka, his wife since 2002, and the pair often work in tandem, motifs migrating from Kusaka’s ceramic vessels to Wood’s paintings and back again. Common subjects include plants, portraits, and sports imagery, all of which come together in Wood’s lush interiors and intricate still lifes. He and Kusaka also incorporate imagery from their expansive art collection — including works by Alighiero Boetti, Michael Frimkess and Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Mark Grotjahn, and Ed Ruscha — as well as from their children’s storybooks and drawings.
In 2010, Wood had his first solo museum exhibition, at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition was followed by a number of public commissions, including murals for the High Line, New York (Shelf Still Life, 2014) and the façades of LAXART, Los Angeles (2014) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (Still Life with Two Owls, 2016).
Wood often works in categories of distinct subject matter, and the publications that are made alongside his exhibitions, or in retrospect, highlight his interest in these genres. "Interiors" (2012) gathers works showing various domestic spaces; "Pots" (2015), paintings of flattened vessels featuring imagery from pop culture and art history; "Portraits" (2016), group and single portraits of Wood’s family, friends, and sports heroes; and "Clippings" (2017), depictions of overlapping stems, leaves, and flowers.
Find original Jonas Wood art on 1stDibs.
2010s Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Paper
2010s Contemporary Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Digital
1770s Baroque Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Watercolor, Handmade Paper, Etching, Intaglio
1980s Pop Art Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Offset, Paper
1850s Modern Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Paper, Lithograph
17th Century French School Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Paper, Watercolor, Engraving
21st Century and Contemporary Minimalist Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Paper, Screen
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Paper, Lithograph
1670s Old Masters Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Etching, Laid Paper, Intaglio
Abraham HondiusHonden Jagen Op Een Beer (Hounds Hunting a Bear) /// Old Masters Dogs Landscape, 1676
Early 2000s Contemporary Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Paper, Drypoint, Mezzotint
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Paper, Lithograph
1990s Fauvist Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Paper, Ink, Monotype
1970s Contemporary Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Lithograph, Paper
1970s Contemporary Jonas Wood Animal Prints
Lithograph, Paper
