Watercolors

Forum Gallery is proud to present a new exhibition for American watercolorist Rance Jones (b. 1965). Rance Jones: Watercolors is his third solo exhibition at Forum Gallery. While Cuba has been a focus since he first visited the island-nation in 2018, Rance Jones most recently traveled to Israel and Palestine early in 2023. Rance Jones: Watercolors includes 10 paintings from the region, and more than 15 works from Cuban trips, taking us on a deep and immersive dive into the human condition. Jones’ scenes of daily life in Cuba and Israel are immediate, moving, nuanced and complex. They offer us a view into the essence of lives, economic hardship, and the timeless resilience of the spirit, each executed with the remarkable technique that distinguishes the art of Rance Jones. Making visits to these unique parts of the world from his home in Texas, Jones has spent time getting to know the inhabitants and learning about their lives. “This is apolitical, humanist art that treats each subject fully and without judgment,” says Robert Fishko. “His amazing technical facility enables him to invest heavily in what he sees. His paintings, then, are not random snapshots of life, they are explorations into the complex reasons he became attracted to the person and the view he selects in the first place.” In conjunction with the exhibition, Forum Gallery is pleased to host the launch of a new monograph, “Rance Jones: Watercolors of Cuba”. The large-scale, hardcover volume, with 156 pages, documents 94 watercolors by Rance Jones, a selection of which are on view in the exhibition. The book includes a foreward by Robert Fishko, Forum Gallery, and essays by Nathalie M. Sanchez, Art Historian, Curator, Journalist, and Andrew Walker, Executive Director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art at the time of writing. “Rance’s work though is more than a documentary expos? of life in the Havana neighborhoods or the marketplace or the countryside beyond the city. Like other historically notable artists who directed their creativity towards often unfamiliar human encounters…Rance’s vision cuts below the specific of one person or place. Whether painting the vibrancy of daily life in Cuba or Israel or Palestine, Rance reaches for something more significant and more elusive." —Andrew Walker, Executive Director, Amon Carter Museum of American Art. “Like the finest photojournalist, the artist captured everyday life under the influence of economic hardship, the deteriorating streets and facades; the expressions on faces subjected to fatigue, the passing of time, sadness, and discouragement, but also to the resignation of a unique human being.” —Nathalie M. Sanchez, Art Historian, Curator, Journalist.

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