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These charcoal drawings by London-based artist Reece Jones are truly stunning. Having been recently exposed to the challenges of drawing with charcoal via Daniela, I have a newfound appreciation for the medium and these are exemplary examples of it at its best.

Presently, Jones has an exhibit at All Visual Arts in London titled Control Test. These natural landscapes all include a large rectangle of light a la James Turrell or Doug Wheeler. The contrast of the natural forms and the geometric unnatural lightform is very striking, from shape to the glowing white amidst the generally dark and heavy charcoal.

From the text on the gallery’s website by Richard Dyer:
…The rectangle of light hovers in the centre of the pictures, like a ghost of the blank paper before a single mark is made. Optically the intervention of the luminous shape operates as a doorway through the space of the sublime landscape. Doorways, gateways, archways, are transitional spaces, liminal thresholds between one order of existence and another, here abstracted to a featureless geometric shape; the space to which the threshold opens up is free to be populated by the speculative imagination of the viewer. It is at once an opening into a void and a solid object or barrier; it dominates the landscape, an almost sentient presence, like an inversion of the black rectangular ‘sentinel’ in 2001: A Space Odyssey…

You can see more of Reece Jones’ work here and here, or visit the London exhibit up through April 21, 2012. The bottom four works are actually watercolor and polymer varnish, not charcoal, but lovely as well.

via all visual arts