Biography of Jonas Wood
In his paintings and drawings, contemporary American artist Jonas Wood depicts overlapping textures and disorientating interiors. He often creates still lifes that are based around pots and vases which he partially abstracts using bright colors and a flattening style. Wood’s intimate domestic scenes evoke the work of modern masters such as David Hockney who Wood cites, along with Lucian Freud and Alex Katz, to be his most prominent influences.
Born in Boston in 1977, Jonas Wood studied at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York, and received an MFA in 2002 from the University of Washington in Seattle. He often works in acrylic and oil on backdrops that are constructed out of cardboard or canvas. He merges a variety of art historical references with visions of people, objects and settings from his real-life and often presents portraits of his friends and family.
Solo exhibitions of Wood’s work have been held at Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Gagosian Gallery in New York and Maddox Gallery in London. His murals are on display at The High Line Art in New York. Jonas Wood’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim and the Whitney Museum of American Art all of which are in New York, Hammer Museum and The Broad in Los Angeles, as well as Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Jonas Wood lives and works in Los Angeles.
