Contemporary artist, Jonas Wood, with his wife and fellow artist, Shio Kusaka.
Jonas Wood has become known for his flat, stylized images of contemporary life, ranging from domestic suburban interiors to vibrant depictions of plants and sporting events. Although he only really rose to prominence in the last 15 years, he has quickly established his reputation, and he’s now widely regarded as one of the foremost artists of our time.
This is reflected in the prices Wood’s work fetches at auction; his most expensive painting sold for £3.8 million in May 2021, and his prints (which account for over 60% of his work sold at auction) regularly fetch up to £1,000, though plenty sell for even higher prices.
Wood once said: “You could call [my work] a visual diary or even a personal history. I’m not going to paint something that doesn’t have anything to do with me.” As such, it’s useful to know a few things about the artist when considering the art. Below are five things you might not have known about Jonas Wood.
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He Was Surrounded By Art From An Early Age
Jonas Wood’s grandfather had an impressively extensive art collection, including work by Francis Bacon and Picasso. Wood’s parents also owned Matisse and Warhol prints which were displayed in the house, and so he was educated in iconic art from a very young age. As he himself said, “at the time, I didn’t understand how important or unique that was, but when I went to grad school, I realised my environment was culturally rich, with modern painting especially.”
He developed his artistic knowledge through his studies, and in 2002, he received an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Washington in Seattle. Wood’s artistic background has undoubtedly influenced his own practice in numerous different ways; there are clear echoes of artists such as David Hockney and Alex Katz in his work, and Wood has even created a series of prints in homage to Matisse, which were sold by Phillips in October 2018 for £49,455.
His Most Expensive Prints Sold For More Than £78,000
Fish Pot/Matisse Pot/Snoopy Pot are three prints of ceramic pots featuring different designs, inspired by a range of things from pop culture to art history. Wood first became interested in ceramics after meeting his wife to be, fellow artist Shio Kusaka; he said that at that time, he began “looking at vessels,” and Greek pots in particular. Wood was drawn to these because “like basketball cards, they have a shape and a form, and they have images that are very flat, graphic, and simple. Basically, there are cartoons on the sides of the pots that tell stories.” His own versions of these are extremely popular in today’s market, and the set of three Fish Pot/Matisse Pot/Snoopy Pot screenprints was sold by Christie’s in May 2024 for £78,723.
Fish Pot/Mattise Pot/Snoopy Pot sold by Christie’s in 2024
He’s Married To Another Artist
Jonas Wood has been married to Japanese ceramic artist, Shio Kusaka for a number of years. They’ve shared a studio together for a while now, alternating whose turn it is to look after their children in the evening. Sharing a life and working space together has, inevitably, led to Wood and Kusaka influencing each other’s work, and it is easy to see how motifs and ideas have shifted back and forth between their creations.
In Wood’s case, it is his wife’s ceramics which have left a truly indelible mark on his own work; Fish Pot/Matisse Pot/Snoopy Pot, for instance, are his three most expensive prints sold at auction to date, and his Matisse Pot 1/Matisse Pot 2/Matisse Pot 3 screenprints were sold by Phillips in October 2018 for £49,455.
Jonas Wood’s wife Shio Kusaka
He Works From Photos
Jonas Wood’s work is not photorealistic, but the artist does “work from photos”, stating: “I collect photos, ones I’ve taken or I’ve appropriated or that other people have sent me. And then I either make a collage of those things or work directly from photos.”
Collage is a technique Wood has returned to frequently since his first experiments at art school, and his Untitled prints from 2014, for instance, resulted from “a collage concept” experiment which combined lithography, photography, and silkscreen printing. The Untitled prints are extremely popular, accounting for four out of ten of Wood’s most expensive prints sold at auction, with one set being sold by Phillips in October 2018 for £68,477.
He’s Inspired By Plants
Plants are everywhere in Wood’s studio, and the artist has explained he’s inspired by “the colour and the symmetry and the shapes and the patterns” of them. He’s even cited other artists such as Hockney and Matisse in whose work plants frequently appear, stating he believes “plants are foundational for artists.”
Indeed, some of Wood’s best-known prints are of plants and cuttings, including Three Clippings, Untitled (2014), and Landscape Pots: Night Bloom, Orchid, and Bromeliad. Though he’s often “very critical [of his work] in the moment,” Wood has found a new appreciation for “the really simple plant paintings” he’s created over the years, tempering the statement by saying: “I’m still expanding. There are always new things I want to paint about, but there’s a lot I still keep coming back to.”
