Jonathan Charles Vaughan

Jonathan Charles Vaughan was born in London in 1977. In 1985 his family immigrated to Florida for what was planned to be only one year. Now twenty years later, he has established himself in Longwood, Florida as a teacher and as a painter. He holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from The School of Visual Arts in New York and a Masters Degree in Teaching in the Visual Arts from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He has exhibited his work in both solo and group shows and has been the winner of a number of awards including the Sylvia G. Wexler Memorial Award for Art Education, the Rookie of the Year Award for High School Teachers in Seminole County, the Best of Show Award from the City of Orlando's Fine Arts Market and a Purchase Award from Valencia Community College.

 

Since the completion of his Bachelors Degree, Jonathan's work has ranged diversely in subject, size and execution. Though many artists today are trained to develop a style and a specific focus of materials, Jonathan believes that this is exactly opposite of what one must do to achieve proficiency in ones work. This attempt to combine his field of study from painting, to drawing, to printmaking and even film, has led him to develop a broad vocabulary of marks and techniques from which he draws from when executing a work. He argues that it is not originality or emotion in a work that propels a viewer to like or dislike it; but, rather the technical skill by which it is made. This view coincides with his belief in a well rounded artist, for making art is a precarious balance of truth and fiction, through which a lie must be told and believed.

 

Currently he is working on paintings, drawings, and prints that revolve around the figure and the spaces which figures inhabit. Through this idea he has developed three primary series from which he bounces back and forth. Two of these series (the grids and the squares) deal with placing of static compositional elements in front of his figures in key points of visual reference in order to form a dialog with the viewer where he hopes the question of purpose and therefore hypothesis takes place. The other series deals with the figure in an almost traditional portrait like manner and includes in the pose or background some specific connection to art history. The figure is a key element to Jonathan's work, and over the past two years, these figure paintings have ranged in size from 10 feet to 2 feet. Vaughan works in Oil and sometimes executes his under paintings with acrylic. Though sometimes he works from photographs, he prefers to work from life.

 

Jonathan is an Art Instructor at Lake Mary High School and an Adjunct Professor of Art History at Seminole Community College. In July of this year he will become the gallery curator at Seminole Community College, a job that he is eager to begin.

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