Jonathon Wright - Biography

Jonathan Wright’s style is a combination of his education: after training as a design engineer in Sheffield he went to on to study fine art and anatomy at the Ruskin School of Drawing at Oxford University. His work as an artist has taken him all over the world and as a freelance illustrator has taken commissions from the film, advertising and aerospace industries.

His work shows exquisite and infinitesimal attention to detail, each brush stroke or pencil line a carefully thought out move to produce a highly observed and rendered image - as beautiful as fine art paintings can be. Each piece is the culmination of hundreds of hours of painstaking work.

Jonathan’s work is purely classically based; his techniques would not be unfamiliar to any 17th century painter. His traditionally made oil paints are based on Vermeer’s palette with no concessions made to modern materials such as acrylic and PVA paints. Each painting is made up of layer upon layer of glazed colour allowing the lighting of the underpainting and the detail of the drawing to hold throughout these processes to the final image. Hence the strong feeling of light and dark and intensity of tone and colour in the paintings.

It is important to emphasise that all the prints in the gallery have been produced from Wright’s own negatives that he has taken himself from the original painting and not by digital photograp, therefore avoiding pixilation associated with digital photography. The inks used in the processing of these prints are guaranteed durable for over 75 years by the manufacturers and are printed on Hahneműhle 100% cotton fibre photo rag paper (?? Gsm)

His style of work takes elements from Japanese animation, Zen paintings and technical illustration. It is also in the tradition of Da Vinci, Vermeer, Stubbs and Escher. For instance, the demonic looks in the equestrian portraiture are the result of the wild nature of the horses stretched to their limit under the intervention of man.

His paintings are not only the observations of a professional technical draftsmen from Sheffield, but of a fine artist with an eye for meticulous detail. They are portraits of the psychology of the subjects without the sentimentality of many mainstream painters and the results are powerful challenging images combining the essence of speed and movement.

Jonathan’s classical training in drawing allows him to relate these skills to any subject matter: from botanical to mechanical, equine to marine, human portraiture to architectural, giving the portfolio an en eclectic range of powerful iconic images.

Jonathan divides his time between his studios on the Isle of Wight in the South of England, and in the Far East. He is currently preparing for an exhibition of the marine and industrial heritage of the Isle of Wight.