Friend of the gallery, Mandy Jakich is the mind and voice behind @creativematterspodcast. Mandy spoke with painter and solo exhibiting artist, Ross Jones in the lead up to his bi-annual exhibition.

As with all of her interviews, Mandy leads a captivating discussion that dives deep into the artist’s process and many other subjects. Mandy explains “We talk about Ōtaki on the Kapiti Coast of Aotearoa where he grew up and the things he loves about where he now lives at Snells Beach. He shares how he failed his first year studying art and design at Wellington Design School only to return a year later and start the course again, gaining his degree 3 years later.

Ross talks about how he likes to play with time and scale in his work, his love of incorporating toys form his childhood and sourced from around the world into his paintings, how his previous illustration career informs his fine art practice today and his love of using sketchbooks for organising ideas, experimenting and drawing.

We discuss goal setting and how this has evolved into his 100 painting project which started in 2009 and finishes in 2028 and The Final 50 painting project which will start up after that and hopefully take him through to his early 80s. We explore why Ross doesn’t like to paint NZ scenes, why he wouldn’t enter an art competition, why he likes to paint one painting at a time and only have a solo exhibition every 2 years and why he loves to paint his dog Alice and why he won’t paint yours.”

Click below to listen to the episode now.