Jo Fox

Jo Fox has been painting her intriguing sensitive paintings since 1996 when a move from London coincided with a change from three-dimensional theatre design to painting in two dimensions. Combining collage and paint, she uses textured paper and fine plaster to layer her subtle colours, building up fractured images, multiple impressions often of figures within an urban landscape. Jo Fox’s landscapes expand around the human forms expressing mood and creating tension, adding to a narrative quality that is integral to her art.

Stanley Road 52 x 55 cm

Jo’s carefully considered use of colour is particularly appealing. Mostly neutral – and beautiful – fragmented planes are interspersed with small points or lines of vivid colour. The pictures are built up from an intricate framework of enfolding, enclosing layers partly revealing and partly concealing the subject matter. They do not give up their meaning at once. Jo’s paintings take time to consider, to approach gently, unexpectedly, open-mindedly. From near and from a distance, Jo Fox’s thoughtful workmanship and skill surprise and reward the viewer. Artists who have inspired Jo’s paintings include theatre designers Tom Cairns, Antony McDonald, Hildegard Bechtler and artists Joan Eardley, Marlene Dumas and Egon Schiele.

Jo Fox studied foundation at Exeter College of Art. She went on to a degree in Theatre Design at Croydon College of Art and postgraduate at the National Theatre Studios followed by work as a theatre designer. She moved to the west country in 2007 and now works in her studio near Lyme Regis. Her paintings have been exhibited in solo shows throughout the West Country and in London, and at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Royal West of England Academy (RWA Annual Open Mixed Media Award 2016), the Discerning Eye Exhibition at the Mall Gallery in London (prize winner 2009 & 2010), NOA exhibition (2010, 2016 & 2017) and at the major Art Fairs in London and New York. This is her first show at Sladers Yard.