Mark Russell Jones is a Los Angeles–based painter. A California native, he earned his BFA with distinction from California College of the Arts, receiving the Vivian Isabel Bolton and Peter Chapman awards. Hovering between abstraction and representation, his approach to painting is informed by his interests in geography, light, and environment.The work considers spatial perspectives while contemplating its interaction with such elements as air, fire, water and earth. The end results are large scale oil paintings echoing the sensibility and following in the lineage of Turner, Rothko, and Richter. To further explore this aspect of his work, Jones has lived and worked in Milan, Paris, Madrid, Auckland, Tokyo, and Osaka. Since 1996, he has exhibited in New York, Chicago, Texas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Palm Springs, with reviews in American press such as Chautauquan Daily, where he received the VACI Partners Award. His work is held in private collections worldwide.