Blake Jones’ whimsical, wide-eyed characters are woven into the fabric of Chicago life, multiplying like rabbits in galleries and public spaces across the city and beyond. 

The Texas-born painter and designer is a Vertical Gallery mainstay, headlining showcases including ‘Doublespeak,’ ‘Life Sketchbook,’ ‘Love Notes’ and, most recently, 2024’s ‘B-Sides,’ an interactive celebration of his lifelong passion for music. Now Blake’s one of 13 artists exhibiting with us at Aqua Art Miami 2025, running December 3-7. The latest installment of our web-exclusive Artist Spotlight series has all the scoop.

Vertical Gallery: Aqua Art Miami is coming up fast. How are you feeling?

Blake Jones: I’m excited. I've been to [Miami Art Week] a few times, and I know the work people present there is bright, fun and poppy. A lot of my work is done in pastel blues and pinks, but for this show, I tried to avoid that as much as possible, and focused on brighter, pop-aesthetic colors. 

I’m showing 12 pieces [at Aqua]. Originally I was going to do all these life and leisure scenarios, like groups of characters going to the zoo or visiting museums. I sat down and drew a few of them, but they were just fragments of ideas. I realized “This isn't gonna work for Miami. I need to do something bolder to stand out.” 

Nothing held strong enough until I sat down and did these 12 pieces. Conceptually, they are the same — I’m still going off the whole idea of life and leisure. Only now the compositions are uniform, and they’re all directly inspired by my own experiences, like this bar in Amsterdam that we went to, or sitting on the beach in Mexico. They're all over the place, but everything feels cohesive. 

Does your bunny character feature in all 12 pieces?

No, there are six dogs and six bunnies. You know it's not just one bunny character, right?

No, I did not know that.

A lot of people think there's just a pink bunny and a blue one, but in my head, every single one of them is completely different. That's how I've always approached it. The bunny in the library in this new series is not the same one at the movies. Those are two different memories — two different stories. 

Is each individual character’s story semi-autobiographical?

Not always. I have a piece that I sent to Australia a few years ago, with a little dog character who’s in detention. He's wearing a shirt that I had when I was in middle school, when I was getting detention. The piece is specifically based on that memory. The dog’s a stand-in for me. 

But one of the pieces I’m doing for Miami is inspired by a movie I saw a few weeks ago, [writer/director Shih-Ching Tsou’s] ‘Left-Handed Girl.’ There's a character that rides a moped around, and I'm drawing one of my bunnies riding that moped, in the same helmet and everything. It’s not a parody — it’s an homage to that character. So it's not really me specifically the way the other [piece] is, but it still is an inspiration to me, because that movie was amazing. I loved it so much.

Where did the bunny come from, anyway?

When I first started, my work was very stream-of-conscious. There'd be, like, 100 characters on a page. People might like one character, but not the others, and it was really hard to please anybody, including myself. Eventually, people started telling me “The bunny’s cool.” At first it was just a blob with two ears — no body, or anything like that. But I kept drawing it, and it just naturally evolved. 

The bunny looks a lot different now than it did two or three years ago. I might draw it one way 50 times, and then with number 51, I might make the eyes bigger or the little tuft of fur smaller. When I get tired of drawing the bunny, I start drawing other characters, which is how the dog snuck up on me. I’ve tried doing a cat, but it hasn't come to fruition yet. I've drawn maybe 100 different versions of a cat, and none of them have resonated with me.

What do you hope the Miami audience takes away from this work?

I just hope it catches their eye, because it’s really bright and bold. A lot of it's very warm. I hope people see that it's different from what they've seen from me before. It’s a little more vibrant… there's more detail in it than what I had in the ‘B-Sides’ stuff, and more texture. But it's not so far away from that work, either. It still connects with people.

Don’t miss the opportunity to add work by Blake Jones (@blake_jones) to your collection! Email sales@verticalgallery.com to receive our Aqua Art Miami collector preview.