Nearly 50 prints by NZ artist Glenn Jones are now in stock at NZ Fine Prints. Glenn Jones is at the vanguard of the new wave of NZ illustrators whose work is now being published as prints. We are delighted to stock Jones’ range of uniquely NZ prints. Glenn’s growing collection of art prints inspired by growing up and living in NZ are his attempt to put “my own spin on our pop culture”, through his prints he is making an often humourous comment about how we view ourselves as NZers, his prints are a statement in a picture about our collective identities and the shared experiences of living in Aotearoa in the early 21st century.
Graphic designers who come from a commercial rather than fine art background are having an increasing impact on NZ’s visual culture. Glenn’s twenty year career in design has reflected this development, he can be designing T-shirts for Threadless (or more recently his own high profile Glennz Tees project) one moment, the next creating an illustration for Popular Mechanics magazine before creating a new image for his range of prints. He’s happy to call himself “Graphic Designer, Illustrator, Artist”, as famous artists like Norman Rockwell have shown it is possible to be highly regarded both an illustrator and as an artist. But sometimes it can take a long time for a new method of making artworks to be accepted as real “art”. Prints in NZ made by “craftsman printmakers” during the 20th century took a long time to be accepted as proper art worthy of appreciation and illustration using a digital toolkit is equally under-rated when it comes to collecting examples of this new artform.
Glenn Jones’s prints are a genuinely new way of catching glimpses of ourselves as New Zealanders in our wall art. It’s refreshing to be promoting the prints of an illustration artist of the calibre of Glenn because he has something new to say, he’s not just watering down other famous NZ designs or recycling well worn motifs (paying homage to an earlier creative idea is just a small step from plagiarism after all).