Current

 LonniRae Jones Resilient Hands F O R T Y Y E A R S

This exhibition spans forty years and traces a creative journey that continues to evolve today. My life has always been shaped by a deep connection to both the visual and performing arts. As a young artist, I divided my time between ballet and visual art, pursuing the discipline of classical dance while developing skills in drawing and painting. Over time, my understanding of art evolved. What began as an attempt to imitate the world around me gradually transformed into a practice centered on expressing what I feel rather than reproducing what I see. 

When I was thirteen years old, I was involved in a car accident that caused a head injury and resulted in essential tremors. I did not realize at the time how much this event would shape my future as an artist. 

At the age of sixteen, I received the Scholastic Art Gold Key Award for my painting The Herons, an experience that encouraged me to continue developing as an artist. Through a National Parks art competition, where I competed alongside professional painters, I was exposed to a wide range of artistic styles. During that experience, I saw a panoramic oil painting of a national park that used varnish and depth in a way that left a lasting impression on me. From that moment forward, it became a personal goal to one day create a painting with that same sense of scale and richness. Forty years later, my painting Heybrook Lookout became the realization of that aspiration. 

I later attended Idaho State University, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in painting, drawing, and weaving. While I loved working across multiple disciplines, fiber art became the central focus of my B.F.A. exhibition. The sculptural and tactile nature of weaving allowed me to explore form and dimension in ways that felt deeply expressive. The ability of fabric to drape, layer, and occupy three-dimensional space gave my work an identity of its own rather than simply representing another object. This experience also shaped how I approach painting today, as many of the structural and textural qualities of fiber art continue to influence my work. 

Alongside my visual art practice, I also pursued dance professionally. Ballet was a central part of my life, and I reached a professional level early in my career. However, injuries—and the possibility that continuing at that level could permanently affect my ability to walk—forced me to step away from performing professionally. Although this was a difficult transition, I remained connected to dance by teaching students, running my own dance studio, performing with college dance groups, and competing in national ballroom competitions in cabaret. For twelve years, I operated my dance studio while maintaining a connection to visual art. 

After the birth of my son, I experienced another turning point in my life. During that time, I was involved in a second car accident that resulted in a spinal cord injury. Unlike the earlier injuries that ended my professional dance career, this injury meant that I could no longer dance at all. At the same time, complications following my son’s birth caused my essential tremors to become significantly more severe. Together, these challenges made even simple tasks difficult, and there was a period when I could barely sign my name. For nearly eight years I stopped making art altogether. My artwork was packed away in the back of a closet because it was too painful to look at a part of my life that felt lost. 

My return to art began unexpectedly when I volunteered through the school PTO to serve as an “Art Mom” and help develop the art syllabus for the school district’s art program. My son was proud of this role and would often challenge me to drawing competitions at home. One day he suggested that we draw characters from ParaNorman using crayons and colored pencils. When I realized I could still draw the characters from memory, I understood that creating art might still be possible. Soon afterward, I drew The Little Cowboy, one of the first drawings I completed after deciding to return to art. When I displayed the drawing in a PTA show and brought it home, my husband asked where I wanted to hang it because he did not want it to go back into the closet. At that moment, I accepted that I was still an artist. 

Since then, my work has been shaped by adaptation and persistence. Rather than allowing tremors to end my practice, they pushed me to discover new techniques and materials. Watercolor, which I had used extensively in college, became difficult because of its precision and unforgiving nature. In response, I began working with oils and modeling paste—materials that allow greater flexibility and structural control. Sylvan Light and Autumn are examples of an almost sculptural technique that developed from experimenting with these new materials. I also developed new approaches to watercolor that incorporate graphite. Texture became a central component of my work, allowing me to imply detail and depth through surface structure rather than precise line work. 

Texture now functions as both a visual and sensory element in my paintings. Areas of raised surface and layered material invite the viewer to look more closely, suggesting detail that may not actually be painted. The surface encourages the eye to discover form through perception rather than literal representation. In this way, the work engages emotion and sensory experience simultaneously, allowing the viewer to perceive more than what is visibly present. 

Over the past fourteen years, I have continued to develop and refine my practice, finding new methods as my tremors have changed. Each adaptation has led to another stylistic shift, which is why this exhibition includes a variety of approaches and techniques. Rather than representing inconsistency, these differences reflect the ongoing evolution of my work as I continue to find ways to create. Two of the pieces featured in this show, Best Friends and River View, took eight years of development before I could complete them as I had originally envisioned. 

Ultimately, my work is grounded in the belief that the essence of being an artist lies in the ability to adapt. Physical challenges did not end my creative life; they redirected it. Every piece in this exhibition represents not only a moment of artistic exploration but also a reaffirmation of the simple decision that guides my practice: if I cannot create in the way I once did, I will find another way to do so.