Monday 13 July 2020

JAGO STONE - A GALLERY VISIT AND AN UPDATE

The gallery visit will be in two parts - first, another chance to see four Jago watercolours of English village homes created towards the end of his life, and then three very different images showing Jago's palette-knife inspirations from the mid-70s, now in the United States.

The update begins with a thank you to those among the 85 Jago contacts in the UK whom I either emailed or Facebook messaged, using a template letter on Saturday, two days ago - and who then ordered a copy of my biography of Jago through Amazon. Amazon is not the only way to get a copy and you may decide that it is not the best way - some of you will have bought a copy from another retailer - but I can at least see the daily statistics of sales rankings for all Amazon books, both in the UK and in the USA. I can't say I understand them - but they do seem to point to trends over time: sales increasing or sales decreasing.

I am delighted to say that this morning the UK Amazon ranking in the Artists, Architects, Photographers category stood at 546. It had been 4,294 the day before. My Saturday marathon of communication had not been in vain! Four weeks before, I had done much the same thing with my 40 American Jago contacts and seen the USA Amazon ranking improve from 3,883 the day before to 562. Marketing in a pandemic benefits from the personal touch!

Here's the link if anyone is interested in learning more about the book and perhaps ordering a copy:

www.robdonovan-author.co.uk/JagoStone-Biography.html

And here is the first of the Jago watercolours. I love the redness of that front door.

The School House - Piddletrenthide - Dorset - Jago Stone (1983)



And now the second. This time the colour of the door is a spellbinding blue. Notice the three birds in
flight - and the ladder.



Number Three, The High Street, Piddlehinton, Dorset - Jago Stone (1983)



You might be interested, if you are not familiar with the biography, in seeing the Contents Page:


CONTENTS





Prologue                                                                                                    

Chapter One      Introducing Jago Stone and my Online Detective Story 4                                            
Chapter Two     The Bar Stool Fantasies of a Cad                 17

Chapter Three    ‘The Burglar’s Bedside Companion’          33

Chapter Four      The Skinny Latte Blog                                54

Chapter Five       A Daughter Appears                                    63

Chapter Six         Lifting the Lid on Jago                               72

Chapter Seven     The American Connection                         97

Chapter Eight      Jago’s English Circuit                               123

Chapter Nine       Jago on Jago                                              148

Postscript 1          Jago the Criminal                                      188

Postscript 2          Jago in 2018                                               196

Summing Up                                                                           210




Here is the third in this series of village watercolours:

Bridge Farm House, Leigh, Dorset - Jago Stone (1983)



And here is the fourth:



Tudor Cottage and the old Village pump of Souldern, Oxfordshire - Jago Stone (1983)


Jago as the watercolourist at his late best.


Now we move on to three Jago palette-knives that are now in the United States. The first is in the collection of Keith and Joan Goodenough and features in the biography:



Untitled - Jago Stone (1976)




These next two, we first see hanging in situ in the house of their owner, Dianna DAiello:






Now separately: 


Untitled - Jago Stone (1976)






Untitled (1976)







Magnificent Jago creations. High time for a re-evaluation of Jago's national standing as an artist on the strength of what we've seen in this gallery visit.




2 comments:

  1. I loved seeing all these paintings in this blog...

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  2. Jago's palette knife pieces do have a particular charisma and he does have some stand out watercolours too alongside the many stories that accompany them. Good luck on the sales, good efforts!

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