Life Stories
Jackie Ritke Jones blends acrylics and her love of humanity to tell tales on canvas.
Story and photos by Donna Clayton Lawder
Looking upon the paintings of Jackie Ritke Jones, this issue's cover artist, invites one to wonder. The poignant ethnic faces—rendered in rich tones, with friendly, rounded features—draw the viewer in, asking more than they give away. Who are these people? one wonders. Where are they from? And what's going on with them?
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Jackie Ritke Jones in the Smith-Benton
Gallery. |
Ritke Jones may not have the answers but enjoys the questions. In fact, it is those very questions—spawned by her wonderings about a stranger walking by, an interesting face in a crowded room—that are the starting points for her work.
"I've always drawn people, since I was a child. And they've always been multicultural," the Silver City artist says of her characters. "My paintings are all about those stories. I love the narratives of people's lives and have curiosity about where they go."
Ritke Jones paints in acrylic and describes her style of rendering human subjects as "almost folk art, but not quite. They're not true to life. I play with dimension, and I exaggerate things—like their big eyes, for example." Such exaggeration, she says, takes the paintings in an expressionistic direction, revealing something about the figures' stories and what the artist herself finds important.
Ritke Jones is a newcomer to Silver City, having moved just a year ago from Madison, Wisc., when her husband, William Jones, was offered a position teaching English at Western New Mexico University.
She's lived mostly in the Midwest, she says, but also in Taos, New York City and Key West, Fla., where she co-owned a gallery. She holds a bachelor's degree in fine art from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and has exhibited in numerous juried shows from Wisconsin to New York City and beyond. Since coming to Silver City, she spent a semester as the gallery director at the McCray Gallery at WNMU.
Ritke Jones says her love of people and the stories behind their lives is now drawing her to explore humanity in another way. She currently is working toward a master's degree in counseling, taking classes at WNMU and gaining field experience by working at Border Area Mental Health Services in Silver City.
"It all comes together," she says, "my love of people and fascination with their stories. This is another way to work with that."
Ritke Jones thinks her counseling work will help her art in another way, by providing the daily bread and butter, freeing her to create her art without concerns over whether or not it will sell.
"I've felt that pinch of changing my art to 'fit' what's going to sell," she says.
Selling hasn't been a problem at the new Smith-Benton Gallery on Texas Street in Silver City, which represents Ritke Jones' work. One of her paintings, "Whores, Gods and Babies," sold as soon as the doors opened on the gallery's grand opening over Labor Day weekend.
The work seems to be a painting of three different women. Actually, Ritke Jones says, it is one woman painted three different ways. The painting grew out of a figure-drawing session to which she was invited. She painted the model from three different angles—different poses, expressions, hairstyles—then later added collage pieces of text and symbols to make her "statement." None of the figures looks exactly like the model, but all three versions hold something of her.
Another piece, "When Earthkeepers Dine," is this month's Desert Exposure cover art. Painted in Ritke Jones' trademark rich colors and rounded, friendly shapes, it depicts the gathering of a multi-ethnic group, presumably for a meal of some sort. Some of the figures hold silverware, vegetables and other objects. One man near the center holds a bright blue egg; another cradles a small earth in his palm.
"Everyone has a role to play in being keepers of the earth," Ritke Jones explains of her varied cast of colorful characters. "It's a worldwide effort." The figures' ethnic features indicate that these "earthkeepers" have come from the four corners of the globe.
"I often have clocks in my pieces," she adds. "It's a reminder that time is ticking away. The question I am asking is, 'Can we hatch this earth?' Do we have the time? The earthkeepers are watching over things for us, keeping things safe. They are keeping peace alive. But what is our role, each of us? Can we do what's needed in the time we have?"
She notes that her style "gives an outsider's feel" to her work, as though an omniscient observer is looking upon the scene. If Ritke Jones is taken to be that observer, it is clear the gaze is not dispassionate, but caring and benevolent. Clearly, she wants the earthkeepers to succeed.
Smith-Benton Gallery, 211D Texas St., Silver City, is open Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., and Mondays that are holidays. 388-1165, www.SmithBenton.net.
Donna Clayton Lawder is senior editor of Desert Exposure.