Published on June 05, 2020

Andy Jones

Andy Jones was born near Raleigh, N.C. and spent 20 years teaching painting and drawing in the Art & Art History department at Eastern Connecticut State University. Beloved by many for his kind nature and generosity, Professor Jones exhibited his artworks across the United States. His works can be found in private collections in the U. S., England and France. Professor Jones was an elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts and the Connecticut Plein Air Society which is devoted entirely to landscape art. He was awarded an Artist Residency from the Weir Farm Trust in 1991 and an Excellence in Creative and Scholarly Activity Award at Eastern in 2001. In 1998, his pen and ink drawing of an oak tree, derived from one of his Connecticut landscape paintings, was selected as the winning design for the U.S. Mint Quarter Competition for the State of Connecticut. In 2008, Professor Jones' Connecticut quarter design was ranked best of the US Mint State Quarter Designs by the Houston Chronicle.

Jones began making art in response to the landscape in 1988 and he was especially attracted to working farms in New England. In 2007, he began to explore subjects in the Southern United States when he painted landscapes at Providence Canyon in Georgia. Painting in Georgia gave him the opportunity to respond to a colorful landscape dramatically different from his New England scenes. His work in Georgia led him to explore the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. In recent years, he was working on a series of large scale works he titled, Blue Ridge Paintings, Appalachian Mountains.