When Glenn Jones and his wife, Julia, looked for a way to use their unique skills to make a business that would allow them to work from home and spend more time with their children, they ultimately decided to make an art business, Glenn Jones Art, which sells artwork made by Jones that heavily incorporates kiwiana, nostalgia, and the unique culture we have in New Zealand.
From images of jet planes soaring in the sky to a humorous depiction of a New Zealander ordering fish and chips, Jones is committed to celebrating NZ’s culture through his prints, taking notable elements of kiwi culture and exploring them in a new way. Because of the kiwiana and nostalgia that Jones puts into his art, his pieces resonate with a lot of people.
The process
While Julia manages orders by sending them to their printing and framing company, with small tweaks and changes always needing to be made, Jones works on creating the artwork. He enjoys generating ideas for his prints, and he takes pleasure in crafting pieces and transforming his art into real, tangible products like a Cadbury Favourites box.
Like all artists, Jones has his own distinct artistic process. He tends to think of and mull over ideas in his head as he drops the kids off in the morning, drinking some coffee. When he gets home and sits down to work, he likes to get into the thick of things immediately.
“Often, I’ll have an idea that I’ve been thinking about while I’m taking the kids to kindy and school, so I’m walking home with the coffee, and I’m just trying to resolve it in my mind more and more before I sit down and I’m straight into it.”
On the occasions where Jones doesn’t have any ideas, he does something else, like some background work on his website. However, he often finds that once he turns his mind to things like the website, his creative side springs into action, and it isn’t long before he’s working through ideas again.
Portraying the NZ lifestyle
Jones resonates with a lot of his prints, as they bring back memories of his kiwi childhood, such as the old-fashioned NZ lollies that appear in his work. Jones loves to show the special culture and way of life New Zealand has in a distinctive fashion, as he continues to find fresh ways of exploring aspects of this country.
“It’s about taking recognisable kiwi culture, something like a jet plane, but putting it in a way that I felt hadn’t been seen before.”
“We end up celebrating us, as a culture, and then we start going: well, that’s only unique to New Zealanders…”
