Chuck Jones Phd

I’m a Knoxville, Tennessee-based painter (via Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Michigan), working primarily with acrylic and a bit of graphite on paper because I like the balance of control and almost-random chance. There’s also some counterpoint emerging in my work between color (I like bright colors) and black-and-white productions. I’m not sure what that’s about yet.

Despite having developed some facility in the world of words, while working in the Clinical Psychology field (that’s the PhD, which differentiates me from the famous Chuck Jones) for fifty years, I’ve long recognized I’ll never be able to write the novel I want to read. But I’ve also discovered how, by approaching my efforts with enough receptive curiosity, I can create images I want to view and gestural patterns of color that, somehow, feel meaningful to me; maybe because I can see the texture and gradations of internal experience (that Clinical-Psychology thing, you know) in the pieces.
So, painting is where I’m now devoting my energy, later in life. Doing so makes every morning I awake to walk into the studio a day worth … well… walking into the studio.

I’ve been asked about influences and, while I’m less sure about literal influence, I do have some...

I have no formal art training, beyond a couple of workshops and my own efforts, drawing and painting for 40+ years; doing so more seriously (meaning, working daily most of the day) in the last 6 years after stepping back from my clinical psychology practice of 5 decades and spending a week, 6 years ago, with Mary Todd Beam, now 89; a water-media Master who encouraged me to dive in.

Here's a comment Mary so generously wrote to me in Spring, 2020: "Chuck is illustrating emotions though an abstract design, giving us a more extensive view of ourselves, informing us about what we're doing in our lives. Only a real artist could do that. Through his paintings, we can now see ourselves more clearly as we really are. I’ve not seen any other artist able to do this like he does."

2019 NATIONAL JURIED EXHIBITIONS:

• 13th Arts & Culture Alliance Show at the Emporium in Knoxville, TN

• Loss, Redemption, and Grace exhibit at EBD4 in Atlanta.

• 2019 Primary Colors Art Exhibition – 4th place, Painting; 6th Overall (Underscoring the Primary Conflict) and Special Merit Award (Reaching Beyond Your Horizons).

• Fusion Art: Line, Shapes, and Objects – July 2019 – Honorable Mention (Euclid’s Bird) plus two other pieces accepted ('Islands Of Yellow' and 'Charleston Afternoon').


2020 NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL JURIED EXHIBITIONS

• Paint: Medium as Power in a Time of Crisis National Juried Exhibition – Barrett Art Center – About That Return to Normal – https://www.barrettartcenter.org/paint-artists-statements

• Knoxville Photo 2020 National Exhibition at the Emporium Center: Three photos invited.

• Art In the Time of Corona™ - A Global Art Project: DAB ART – Distancing 101.

• The Black and White Show 2020 – Core New Art Space, Lakewood, CO – Jung's Butterfly - https://youtu.be/ANWjAE8dHS0

• Unleashed – 2020 – Gallery Underground – Arlington, VA – Breaking Free

• The Art List – Artist of the Month - 2nd Place – Arboreal Ambiguity

• National Fine Art Show - Lincoln Gallery, Loveland, Col...