Jon Doran is traveling from Cornwall for the opening of The Poetics of Light at Abend Gallery on Friday, October 16, 6 to 8 PM. Before he arrives, we asked him a few questions about his life, his family and the places he paints.
How did you end up in Cornwall, and what keeps you there?
I came to Cornwall about 15 years ago to study art and surf. Growing up in the South East of England was great for its proximity to London and France, but Cornwall has a particular wildness to it. The land reaches out towards the Atlantic, giving it a sense of remoteness, with its varied geology, big skies, looming cliffs and wild seas. Cornwall also attracts a wonderful community of creatives who share an appreciation for the landscape and way of life.
What does a normal day look like for you, from the time you get up?
I like to get up early, before the family, to have coffee and write. My wife and I have four children, so it’s certainly a busy but rich season of life. Those early moments of silence are important to me. I’ll then head to my studio, which is a short walk away past the boats moored on the river. After catching up on emails, the afternoons are dedicated to painting, either working outside on location or getting absorbed in a larger studio piece. One of the great things about being an artist is the flexibility. Over the summer, we’ve often packed a picnic and some paints, headed to the beach, and let the children play while I made a painting.
There’s a portrait in the show called Brother. Who is it, and what was it like to paint him?
It’s my brother David, unsurprisingly! He’s always been beside me, and we’ve become something of a creative duo. Painting can be a solitary endeavour, with no manual or clear path to follow, so having a fellow traveller has made a real difference.
Although the painting is of David, I’m primarily interested in exploring the possibilities of the language of paint: how marks, shapes and tones come together to create form, and how that form can give rise to a sense of a person, a story or a feeling.
Van Gogh often used the ordinary objects and people around him as a way of exploring deeper ideas about life. That’s something I’m interested in too: using the familiar and everyday as a starting point for something more universal.
Your brother is coming to Denver with you. What are you two planning to do while you’re here?
We’re bringing our sketchbooks and paints and heading into the Rockies to paint as much as possible. When we were teenagers, we travelled to Paris and around Europe with sketchbooks in one hand and skateboards in the other, drawing and painting wherever we went. It’ll be fun to revisit that spirit of adventure.
You said you want to paint the Rockies. What are you hoping to find?
I’ve always been drawn to wild landscapes, and the Rocky Mountains offer something on an extraordinary scale, where you feel small in relation to the landscape. The variety of textures and elements will be exciting to work with. Hopefully, we’ll find some dark granite, conifer trees and rushing water set against distant mountains and sky!
I’m fascinated by how oil paint can evoke such different qualities: the sharpness of rock, the movement of water, the softness of distant mountains. And yet, ultimately, it’s all just paint on a flat surface. That tension between the material reality of paint and the illusion it creates is something I’m continually exploring.
There are swimmers in a few of these paintings. Do you swim there yourself?
Yes. Most of the locations in the show are about a twenty-minute drive from my studio. There are some very special hidden coves where the foliage hangs down towards the water. Wild swimming is an immersive experience in which everything else fades into the background. Painting can feel much the same. Both allow me to become completely absorbed in the moment and in the experience of the landscape.
Where do the roses and lemons come from? Your garden, the market, a friend?
The roses come from my garden. I love the old English roses, with their subtle variations in colour and beautifully complex forms that reward close observation. We had a particularly good crop this June, so I’d pick them from the garden and walk them over to the studio to paint.
If you could keep one painting from this show, which one would it be, and why?
I think it would be Amidst the Rocks and Reflections. I’m always looking for a balance between abstraction and representation, between the physical marks of the paint and the illusion they create. I particularly enjoyed the sense of clarity I found in this one. It feels as though the different elements have come together in just the right way.
Is there a story behind any of these paintings? A day that went wrong, or a spot you keep going back to?
That’s a wonderful question. Every painting has a story behind it. Plein air painting is an encounter with reality: you’re responding to a particular place, at a particular moment, with all the changing light, weather and atmosphere that entails.
There’s a special sense of coherence that I experience when painting from life. The painting, the landscape and my palette are all illuminated by the same light. Everything belongs to the same moment, and painting becomes a way of participating in nature rather than simply observing it.
My process begins on location, where I make a colour study, which I then use back in the studio to inform the larger pieces.
I’ve returned to Helford Passage repeatedly; in fact, five of the paintings in the show are from this area. For me, it’s an ideal place to explore the visual complexity of rocks in dappled light, combined with a wonderful sense of quietness. It’s often sheltered from the wind and away from the crowds. I’m always looking for these quiet moments, when the light falls in particularly beautiful ways, whether across rocks and water or over petals and fruit.
The Poetics of Light is on view at Abend Gallery, 1261 Delaware Street, Denver, October 16–31, 2026. The opening reception is Friday, October 16, 6 to 8 PM, and Jon will be there. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 12 to 4 PM, and by appointment.