Vertical Portraits: Jamie Jones
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Jamie Jones tears off the mask of adulthood to depict the child within. His paintings portray preteens costumed as Marvel and DC Comics heroes — imagined identities that conceal the true self.
“I started painting kids as superheroes at the end of 2022,” says UK-born, Cyprus-based Jamie, one of 13 artists exhibiting with Vertical Gallery at this year’s Aqua Art Miami (December 3-7). “It came from what I feel a lot of us are missing from our lives: the things that made us happy and joyous as children. I want to take you back to that era in your life where your greatest superpower was that you could be anything you wanted to be.”
It took Jamie longer than most to become the artist he wanted to be. His origin story begins in the north of England: “Comics were always part of my life,” he recalls. “I was drawing constantly.” When Jamie was seven years old, his family relocated to Saudi Arabia, and four years later, he returned home to attend boarding school in Yorkshire. “Art was something I really, really threw my head and heart into, and I ended up getting an art scholarship,” he says. “I went to [Blacon Art College], where I started doing multimedia and design, because I wanted to use things like Photoshop. But the course wasn't really what I wanted. I didn’t get much out of the experience.”
Jamie spent the next seven years at British retail goliath Marks & Spencer, working his way up from stocking shelves to mid-management roles. From there he served two decades in the hospitality sector, owning and operating a series of bars as well as consulting for Michelin-starred establishments across the globe. The so-called “Cocktail Hobbit” even claimed Diageo World Class GB Bartender of the Year honors in 2017.
“I was well known in the global drinks industry. I was traveling around the world constantly, doing appearances to make cocktails, or writing menus and training bartenders. I also released the world's first augmented reality cocktail menu, called Mirage,” Jamie says. “Creating the recipes and the aesthetic and the presentation of these drinks allowed my passion for creativity to come out again.”
After the COVID-19 pandemic knocked the hospitality business off its axis, Jamie pondered his next career move. His now-wife Laura had the answer.
“My first marriage wasn't a pleasant one, because I wasn't who I was before we got married. I'd been shaped into somebody very different,” he says. “Coming out of that experience, I met Laura. She was very encouraging of the way I dressed, the things I was into, my music choices — just me being me. She was also the first to encourage me to pick up my pencil and start drawing again. I did a drawing of Christopher Walken, and I thought ‘Oh, look, I can still do this. Something's still in there.’ And then I put it on Instagram, and people said ‘Wow, that's amazing!’ So I got some paints, some acrylics, and decided to keep moving forward.”
When Laura was furloughed from her job, the couple relocated to Cyprus, the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean. There Jamie made his first-ever group show appearance, contributing three pieces to 2020’s En Plo Artists of Cyprus exhibition in the city of Paphos. A pair of group shows back home in Manchester, England preceded his first solo showcase, ‘Mnimoniko,’ presented in Paphos in 2022.
Jamie’s 2023 solo exhibition ‘Misled Youth’ was the first to feature his now-signature portraits of children made up as pop culture icons. “I’ve suffered from depression a number of times in my life, and I think a lot of those pressures are brought on because we're not necessarily the people we want to be. We’re told to grow up and behave: ‘Do this, do that.’ I wanted people to reflect on who they were as children, and superheroes were the easiest way for me to do that,” he says. “My work has always been about nostalgia, and everybody around the world recognizes these characters and sees a bit of themselves in them.”
‘Misled Youth’ signaled Jamie’s first foray into oil painting. “I'd only picked up and started using oil paints three or four months before. I'd exclusively used acrylic and spray paint up until that point, but I like to challenge myself, and I was getting to a point where I felt I needed to become more of a grown-up artist, with my own colorway and color scheme,” he says. “Technically, I'm colorblind, so vivid colors dance in my eyes in a different way. When I put colors together, brighter colors generally appeal to me a lot more. The other thing is that I was quite sick as a child, and ended up with damage to my left eye. I now have about 10 percent vision in that eye, and the right eye's on its way to having big problems. But I'm doing what I can with the tools that I've got. It's all instinctual — I know what colors I like, and I know what feels right to me.”
Jamie created 50 pieces for ‘Misled Youth,’ selling all but a handful. Several pieces from the show were acquired by Anthimos Economides, CEO of development firm KUUTIO Group, who then commissioned Jamie to create artwork for the M Boutique Hotel, an adults-only retreat minutes away from the Mediterranean coastline. Jamie created 235 pieces in total, one for each hotel room, in a span of just six weeks.
“I was just coming off the back of the [‘Misled Youth’] show, having worked for nine months solid and planning to finally get some downtime, into working 15 hours a day,” Jamie chuckles. “My biggest stress was getting the canvases printed and framed. I customized every single piece as well. Each one had a different spray-painted background. It was an intense project, but I nailed it.”
Jamie also nailed his contributions to Aqua Art Miami — his very first exhibition on U.S. shores.
“[The children are] not wearing real costumes this time. They're wearing clothes they could find around the house and repurpose as superhero costumes, and relying on their imagination to bring the character to life,” Jamie explains. “This body of work is my inner child coming out. This is just how I did it — I'd run around with chopsticks between my fingers, pretending I was Wolverine. When you’re a kid, it doesn't matter what something really is: it’s about what you see. Children look at the world in a different way, and I think if you can master that as an adult, you’ll be a very happy and very positive person.”