Jones, Jeffrey
Entry updated 23 December 2023. Tagged: Artist.
(1944-2011) American artist born Jeffrey Durwood Jones, who for many years used the working name Jeff Jones, and after hormone therapy (from 1998) and gender transition was named and worked as Jeffrey Catherine Jones. After some initial work for Comic books in the mid-1960s, Jones began producing an amazing number of covers for various publishers, often illustrating works of Sword and Sorcery. This work immediately stood out for its regular use of a soft focus and subdued colours; one representative example was the cover for the 1969 Avon edition of Stanley G Weinbaum's The New Adam (1939), showing an undressed man holding the planet Earth and a glowing atom against a murky purple-and-red background. Jones also painted magazine covers for the magazines Amazing Stories and Fantastic. During the 1970s this artist took on fewer assignments; these included an evocative cover for Roger Zelazny's collection The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories (coll 1974) illustrating "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" (November 1963 F&SF) by showing a pale figure holding a red rose. Jones also drew a comic strip in The National Lampoon from 1972 and 1975, and in the early 1980s had a recurring strip in Heavy Metal. Having come to socialize more with comics artists, Jones joined Michael William Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Berni Wrighton in 1975 to form an artists' collective known as the Studio; their work together was commemorated in a 1979 book of that name.
Jones's steadily diminishing output in the 1980s and 1990s seemingly reflected growing depression and alcoholism, although the artist continued to produce noteworthy works, such as the image of "Tarzan Rescues the Moon" for a 1998 calendar that won a Spectrum Award. Unfortunately she suffered a nervous breakdown in 2001, though recovering to produce some new artwork before her death in 2011. Nominated for the Hugo for Best Professional Artist three years in a row (1970-1972), Jones received a World Fantasy Award in 1986 and the Grandmaster Spectrum Award in 2006; she entered the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2023. [GW]
Jeffrey Durwood Jones; later Jeffrey Catherine Jones
born Atlanta, Georgia: 10 January 1944
died 19 May 2011
works
- The Studio (New York: Dragon's Dream/Big O Publishing, 1979) with Michael William Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith and Berni Wrightson [graph: pb/Jeffrey Jones, Michael William Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith and Berni Wrightson]
- Yesterday's Lily (New York: Dragon's Dream/Big O Publishing, 1980) [graph: pb/Jeffrey Jones]
- Age of Innocence: The Romantic Art of Jeffrey Jones (Grass Valley, California: Underwood Books, 1994) [graph: edited by Arnie Fenner and Cathy Burnett: hb/Jeffrey Jones]
- It's Garbage Coming (Kingston, Rhode Island: Donald M Grant, 1994) [coll of cartoons: graph: pb/Jeffrey Jones]
- Jeffrey Jones Sketchbook (Lakewood, New Jersey: Vanguard Productions, 2000) with George Pratt [illus/hb/Jeffrey Jones]
- The Art of Jeffrey Jones (Grass Valley, California: Underwood Books, 2002) [graph: edited by Arnie Fenner and Cathy Fenner: hb/Jeffrey Jones]
- Jeffrey Jones: A Life in Art (San Diego, California: IDF Publishing, 2011) [graph: hb/Jeffrey Jones]
- Idyl – I'm Age (Hampton Falls, New Hampshire: Donald M Grant, 2015) [coll: graph: reprinting comic strips "Idyl" from The National Lampoon and "I'm Age" from Heavy Metal: hb/Frank Frazetta]
about the artist
- Patrick Hill, Chad Kolean, Emanuel Maris and J David Spurlock. Jeffrey Jones: The Definitive Reference (Lakewood, New Jersey: Vanguard Productions, 2013) [bibliography: hb/photomontage of book covers]
links
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