Contemporary Art
in Greenville, South Carolina
Wilkinson | ART Gallery
CURRENT EXHIBITION
Dana Jones:
The Blue Plates
RECEPTION: Mid-Late November, 2026. Details TBA.
Wilkinson ART Gallery is pleased to host a reception for The Blue Plates (working title) by artist Dana Jones, coming mid-late November 2026, with show title, date and time details to come.
How I Spent My Summer: The Blue Plates
The Blue Plates came about from wanting to expand a short series of paintings I’d completed in 2024: Ponds and Pools. These are horizontal pieces, acrylic on paper, which read as abstract, minimal bodies of water.
A man at the showing of these in the fall of 2024 set the gears in my head turning by opining that the group be expanded to 12, or even 16 pieces. Inwardly groaning (these were a bitch to paint), I knew that he was right. And I knew that the trick would be to keep the work engaging, mesmerizing even, as the work, simple in composition, is tedious to create.
Meanwhile, other voices, both in and out of my head, told me that my work, iterative as it is, would lend itself to printing. Again, I agreed. This prospect seemed like it should be more engaging, more entertaining to develop than carefully layering 15, 20, or 30 translucent layers of ultramarine paint within the confines of a minimalist composition.
Which is how I came to find myself at a three-day monotype workshop in E. Flatrock, North Carolina, under the guidance of Phil Garrett and Butcher Shop Press. Phil assured me this would change the way I paint, the way I think about painting. Boy, has it. If painting is wandering around town without a map, then the monotype process is akin to being in a room without door or window, but with a couple of hand tools that might be suited to fashioning them.
Monotype is in theory a simple process (make a painting on a plate, run it through a press and thereby transfer that painting to paper). It wholeheartedly welcomes accident and chance into the creative process. It is, in my mind, a bridge from painting to printing: the gateway drug. It is also, for me, an invitation and a challenge to make the most of a very humble skill set.
It was in that workshop that I had my perhaps misguided Aha! Moment that I should use the monotype process to simplify and energize the creation of a dozen or more sumptuous, undulating, and vivid Ponds and Pools. And thus began my months-long session of frustration, fun, discontent, and experimentation, washing me up on a different blue water shore than the one I set out for, continuing to think of reasons to smear ink on paper.
If you've followed Dana's work over the years, this will be an essential catch-up and refresher with Dana, and your best chance to see some if his most recent work.
Wilkinson ART Gallery is located at 39 Blair Street, Greenville SC 29607, in a downtown residential area of Greenville, near Cleveland Park. Convenient curbside parking with no parking fees.
Come see us.
photo: Wilkinson ART. Reception guests.
