Jonas Wood paints his everyday life, from houseplants, bookshelves, basketball cards and his wife’s ceramics, turning them into scenes so dense with pattern and colour that what we would normally consider ordinary objects suddenly burst with vibrancy and imagination. Drawing on the flattened, richly patterned compositions by Matisse, David Hockney and Alex Katz, Wood has gone on to exhibit worldwide, from New York to Tokyo.
Summary
Jonas Wood paints his everyday life, from houseplants, bookshelves, basketball cards and his wife’s ceramics, turning them into scenes so dense with pattern and colour that what we would normally consider ordinary objects suddenly burst with vibrancy and imagination. Drawing on the flattened, richly patterned compositions by Matisse, David Hockney and Alex Katz, Wood has gone on to exhibit worldwide, from New York to Tokyo.
Artworks by Jonas Wood
About Jonas Wood
Biography
About Jonas Wood
Wood was born in 1977 in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up around his grandfather’s art collection, which included work by Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder and Andy Warhol. He studied a degree in psychology, before deciding in his final undergraduate year that painting was what he actually wanted to do. He went on to earn an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2002, where he met the ceramicist Shio Kusaka, whom he later married.
From psychology to painting
After graduate school, Wood moved to Los Angeles and worked as a studio assistant, first for the painter Laura Owens and later for the sculptor Matt Johnson, while developing his own practice on the side. A solo show at Black Dragon Society in Los Angeles in 2006 launched his career; by 2010, he was given his first museum solo exhibition at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum.
Home, sport and the studio
Wood’s subjects are inspired by his own surroundings: houseplants, rugs, bookshelves, family photographs and ceramics made by his wife, Kusaka. Basketball cards, tennis courts and other sporting imagery are recurring throughout his work, reflecting an interest in collecting that runs back to childhood.
His paintings favour flattened space and bold patterns over traditional depth. Printmaking is also a significant part of Wood's practice: plants, pots, domestic interiors and sporting imagery recur throughout his screenprints, lithographs and etchings, often reworking the same subjects that appear in his paintings. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Biography
About Jonas Wood
Wood was born in 1977 in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up around his grandfather’s art collection, which included work by Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder and Andy Warhol. He studied a degree in psychology, before deciding in his final undergraduate year that painting was what he actually wanted to do. He went on to earn an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2002, where he met the ceramicist Shio Kusaka, whom he later married.
From psychology to painting
After graduate school, Wood moved to Los Angeles and worked as a studio assistant, first for the painter Laura Owens and later for the sculptor Matt Johnson, while developing his own practice on the side. A solo show at Black Dragon Society in Los Angeles in 2006 launched his career; by 2010, he was given his first museum solo exhibition at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum.
Home, sport and the studio
Wood’s subjects are inspired by his own surroundings: houseplants, rugs, bookshelves, family photographs and ceramics made by his wife, Kusaka. Basketball cards, tennis courts and other sporting imagery are recurring throughout his work, reflecting an interest in collecting that runs back to childhood.
His paintings favour flattened space and bold patterns over traditional depth. Printmaking is also a significant part of Wood's practice: plants, pots, domestic interiors and sporting imagery recur throughout his screenprints, lithographs and etchings, often reworking the same subjects that appear in his paintings. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.