Nicholas Jones: Ice and Light

The light of the Arctic is like a living thing. It is wonderfully crisp, full and subtle,

and has long exerted an influence on my paintings. It was not until my recent visits

to Finnish Lapland in pursuit of the aurora that I actually experienced it for myself.

The vast skies, the dazzling brilliance of bright sun on snow, the intensity of Arctic

twilight, and the irresistible beauty of the Arctic night all made a deep impression.

The paintings in this exhibition seek to explore and evoke the mesmerising

qualities of Arctic light, and the fascinating ways in which it interacts with ice and

snow. Many of the works are concerned with the remarkable variety of optical

phenomena that occur in arctic skies: solar and lunar rings, halos, and coronas, and

the fog-bows, cloud-bows and rainbows that arc across Arctic skies. I am fascinated

by their delicate beauty and the way they can bring to a landscape a mysterious

sense of something happening or an impression of transcendence.

It is remarkable how in the Arctic such an endless range of beauty can be created

from the simplest of elements: ice, water, air and light. It is my hope that these

works succeed in evoking and celebrating something of the fragile and untamed

wonder of this extraordinary region of our world.

NICHOLAS JONES

December 2018