The Welsh artist Colin Jones considered that he belonged to what he described as the ‘Catholic Ghetto’. He was fond of abstract discussion, primarily regarding Catholicism and Wales; both these concerns inspired his art. The blue permanence of his pictures suggest a spiritual condition and a quest for a fundamental something that dispensed with detail.

His subjects; isolated people or their remote Welsh environment, further expressed an elemental interest in a living condition. In the Rhondda, he found a distinct Welsh reality that closely affected his work. This produced on the one hand, personable and struggling individuals and on the other, a hard-edged appearance rarely relieved by the curve of a chapel window or the contour of an overbearing hill. This dichotomy, of intense individuality and a uniform aesthetic, is reflected in his pictures.

The aesthetic triumphs, for the pictures are both linear and refined. The disappointment, danger or uncertainty of the Rhondda does not assail those viewing his pictures. They find instead the accepted fact of a chapel or a person without all its accepted consequences.

 
Courtesy of the artist’s website.