Jeffrey Catherine Jones


Jeffrey Catherine Jones was an American artist whose work is best known from the late 1960s through the 2000s. Jones created the cover art for over 150 books through 1976, as well as venturing into fine art during and after this time. Fantasy artist Frank Frazetta called Jones "the greatest living painter". Although Jones first achieved fame as simply Jeff Jones and lived for a time as male, she later changed her name and transitioned to female.

Early life

Jeffrey Durwood Jones was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. As a child, her father was overseas in the military. She graduated from Georgia State College in 1967 with a degree in geology and was keenly interested in art and admired the work of Johannes Vermeer, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and Rembrandt.

Career

Jones moved to New York City to pursue an art career and quickly found work drawing comics pages for King Comics, Gold Key Comics, Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella, as well as Wally Wood’s Witzend. She painted covers for books, including the Ace paperback editions of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series and Andre Norton's Postmarked the Stars, The Zero Stone, Uncharted Stars and many others. For a period during the early 1970s, Jones also provided illustrations to Ted White's Fantastic. She drew many covers and short stories for a variety of comics publishers including DC Comics, Skywald Publications, and Warren but generally avoided the superhero genre.
In the 1972–1975 issues of National Lampoon, Jones produced a full page strip entitled Idyl.

The Studio

From 1975 to 1979 Jones shared a workspace in Manhattan's Chelsea district with Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Michael Kaluta, collectively named The Studio. Dragon's Dream produced a volume of their work in 1979. Industry journalist Tom Spurgeon commented on the broader significance and influence of The Studio in his obituary of Jones at The Comics Reporter:
By the early 1980s she had a recurring strip in Heavy Metal titled I'm Age. Cartoonists Walter Simonson and J. D. King said at the time that Jones had a growing interest in expressionism and did not pursue comic work as closely thereafter.

Personal life

In 1964 while attending Georgia State College, Jones met fellow student Mary Louise Alexander. The two began dating and were married in 1966. Their daughter Julianna was born the following year. After graduation, the couple moved to New York City but divorced in the early 1970s.

Gender transition

As an adult, Jones recalled wanting to be a girl from her earliest memories. She confronted these issues in 1998 and began hormone replacement therapy. Comics writer and journalist Steven Ringgenberg elaborated on the transition in an obituary/tribute to Jones at The Comics Journal:
It's now known from the artist’s personal writings that she had felt conflicted about her gender since childhood, always feeling a greater affinity for the fair sex than for her own maleness. Having grown up as a product of the patriarchal 1950s, with a domineering war-hero father, Jones did not know how to cope with her yearning to be female, and felt ashamed. For years she tried to drown these feelings in alcohol, but, after much soul-searching, Jones realized that although she’d been born male, inside she was a woman. She began hormone replacement therapy in 1998, and set out upon a new phase of life as a woman, changing her name to Jeffrey Catherine Jones. Yet even this transition did not bring peace to this gentle, troubled artist, for in 2001, she suffered a nervous breakdown, which led to the loss of her home and studio. However, she eventually recovered, and by 2004 began painting and drawing again.

Death

Jones' personal Facebook page reported following her death: "Legendary fantasy artist Jeffrey Catherine Jones passed away today, Thursday May 19, 2011 at 4:00 am surrounded by family. Jeffrey suffered from severe emphysema and bronchitis as well as hardening of the arteries around the heart..." She was survived by her daughter.

Awards

Jones was nominated for the Hugo Award for best fan artist in 1967, and for the best professional artist Hugo in 1970, 1971, and 1972. In 1975 she was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for best artist and won the award in 1986. Additionally, Jones was nominated for the Chesley Award in 1999.

Films

In 2012 a film retrospective on DVD by Maria P. Garbado was released by Indiegogo featuring interviews with friends, fellow artists, and the artist herself titled Better Things: The Life and Choices of Jeffrey Catherine Jones.

Books

Charlton Comics