Bronlyn Jones: Drafts of an Empty Page

“There is an essential ambiguity I am drawn to and I accept”
–Bronlyn Jones

Bronlyn Jones’s body of drawings collectively titled “Drafts of an Empty Page” delicately situates the blank slate of the creative process not as an absolute void, but as stage in the journey from raw material to realized idea. Each drawing in the series is something of a portrait of an “empty” piece of paper. The titles of the exhibited works, created between 2009 and 2013, equally reference named and unnamed sources. Some are drawn from the papers and sketchbooks of artists and writers (Ellsworth Kelly, Louise Bourgeois, Walter Benjamin) while others are from anonymous notebooks, either found or commercially available.

Each work presents on the face as blank paper: a page or spread from a notebook, with only the default features that the viewer expects: ruled or gridded lines; margins; holes for binding staples; rounded corners. Upon prolonged looking, one recognizes the irregularities, subtle alterations, the qualities of marks that all allow a viewer to see the drawing for what it is — not a blank, but a surface already marked with a series of choices that set the stage for the further development of an idea.

Inspired by the regularities and idiosyncrasies of an individual sheet of paper, the life it has experienced, and what it will become, Jones realizes these works with a balance of control and chance — the intentional and the arbitrary coexist in her appreciation of the materials inherent to writing and drawing: paper, pencil and eraser. An empty page is full of potential, and Jones has created drawings that are not only homages but also hopeful questions for all that can be.

Bronlyn Jones’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Her work is included in numerous private and public collections including; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Harvard Museum of Art, Cambridge, MA, RISD Museum, Providence, RI, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, among others. She recently relocated back to her childhood home state of Iowa.