Olwen Jones, born in 1945, first studied at the Harrow College of Art and later from 1965 to 1968 at the Royal Academy Schools where she was taught among other by Gertrude Hermes. A year after she left that academy she was fortunate to be able to purchase an antique 1852 Columbian Press and she started to focus on printmaking. She even assisted other printmakers in printing their work for them, including at some stage the artist Norman Ackroyd.
Later in her career she became more interested in working in watercolour. Jones is a member of the Royal Society of Painter-printmakers and the Royal Watercolour Society where she served as vice-president for a number of years. She is currently also a member of the Colchester Art Society. Her work is widely exhibited and collected in many major collections.
Her artwork tends to examine interesting shapes and architectural features, plants and other objects. She is particularly interested in plants with exciting forms, like sunflowers or tropical plants. She is interested in spaces and uses structures like conservatories, greenhouses, windows, rooms and so on to frame her images. She especially likes to also include glass and the various ways the glass reflects and lets through light and how glass both frames the space and allows you to see beyond it.
This great linocut is of her beloved Columbian Press. The work was printed in a small edition of only 30. It is not dated but is one of her earlier works, most likely created when she purchased the printing press or shortly thereafter. No doubt the shape intrigued her. She has pictured the press here in black but it is set within a pattern of close-up fragments of the same press in a beautiful deep ochre-yellow. The whole image makes for an exciting and interesting image with fascinating shapes and lines.