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November 2008 update,
Welcome to the Sea of Pain Fine Art Productions website.
-I am currently designing an entire pack of playing cards. It is proving to be a monumental job, and has crossed the border into obsession to the exclusion of all else out of sheer necessity to have any chance of a completion date. I'm very pleased with the results so far, watch this space for previews hopefully sometime around the end of 2008. They will be worth the wait.
Thank you for your continuing support, the website receives a lot of hits from all over the world. Once the cards are in production, I will be back into the graphite, and trying my hand at pastels after attending the USQ Mcgregor winter school in June. In the meantime, here are a couple of graphite drawings I managed to complete this year before the playing cards set in,

Brett A. Jones

Brett A. Jones was born in 1966 in Redcliffe, Queensland. His family lived in the western outskirts of Brisbane until 1976. A move to the Gold Coast saw him attend art classes with Mr. Scott-Vandyke for a few years learning drawing and oil painting. During the next few years (while still at school) he painted and sold dozens of oil paintings, mostly in duo-tone and sometimes involving diptychs and triptychs of Australian landscape scenes. His inspiration in those days was Hans Heysen. He left school after grade 10 and completed the first year of a boilermaking apprenticeship in a shipyard on the Brisbane River before switching to a fitting and turning apprenticeship in the Brisbane City Council which he completed with honours in 1986. After working for an oil exploration company in western Queensland, he moved to Cairns and worked at Trinity Wharf, for a goldmine west of Georgetown, for the Far North Queensland Electricity Board, and for a large engine rebuilding company, while still developing his artistic skills at every opportunity.
He moved to Hervey Bay in 1991 and worked for various engineering firms until an accident at work. He broke his left wrist and permanently injured his spine. There followed a few very hard years during which he turned fully back to his artistic roots. The intense personal drive to be an artist sent him searching for a way to achieve in the fine art world, within the limitations imposed on him by chronic severe pain (hurt to move, hurt to breathe).

He experimented with various mediums including wood, steel, aluminium, brass, spray-painting, leather, house enamel & pure tint, coloured pencil, watercolour and oil paint. He hand carved motorcycle parts, did custom paint jobs, hand made throwing knives from old car springs (which are things of great beauty and really just another form of artistic expression), painted a large mural which took two and a half years to finish and was started with a broken wrist, and set up a studio and tried to seriously re-engage with his oil painting past with a view to painting and selling originals. It took four months of pain to paint the first one (Canesmoke Sunset), which almost made him give up art for good.

"I sat like Rodins' Thinker for about three hours one day until finally realizing if I was going to give up producing originals for sale because of pain I might as well just do what I really wanted to and admitted to myself I'd really rather draw in monochrome than paint, pick the subject matter on a purely personal level, and not limit myself with time constraints and others expectations of what fine art is. It dawned on me after awhile (When I started winning art shows) that it didn’t matter how long it took me to prepare for and complete a work if the results were good enough to be published as fine art prints".

He subsequently spent the next few years doing a series of works in graphite, each one taking many hundreds of pain filled hours to complete. Four of these prize winning works are now in print, with more to come.

"I always wanted to fully explore the concept of Chiaroscuro, to make people really believe there was a motorcycle, or bowl of fruit or whatever in front of them, using only the effects of light. For me 2B graphite lends itself to this perfectly as it represents all the grey tones from so close to white, that it is white unless compared to actual white, to black and every tone in between. White is the blank paper, but to the minds eye can be made to look like anything if its surroundings are the right shape and tone. My art teacher Mr. Scott-Vandyke told me when I was ten that if I wanted to draw properly, to draw the shadows and let the highlights take care of themselves. He impressed that on me all the time. I can hear him saying it like it was yesterday, instead of thirty years ago.

The fact that I draw motorcycles on a white background is completely secondary to the fact that I am trying to produce fine art of the very highest order, which can be put up against anything here or overseas. The reason they're pictures of motorcycles is because I had to find a subject I could become so obsessed with, that it would override the ever present back pain (the physical sea of pain). Motorcycles have always held a deep fascination for me. A stationary motorcycle is a beautiful combination of balance, latent speed, power, and danger, and a symbol of so many things, including freedom. At the same time they provide a number of different materials, surfaces, shapes, and textures to allow me to fully explore the parameters I have decided on. I always place them in full sunlight, this being the light which produces the most intense reflections, back lighting, and deep shadows that result in the multiple light effects and three dimensional depth ideal for showcasing my chosen drawing technique (chiaroscuro). It's called Sea of Pain Fine Art Productions not just because of the maddening struggle with the spinal pain. When something takes up to nine months from start to finish with that kind of focus, it hurts your brain a long time before you're finished (the mental sea of pain)."

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1st prize in under 11 section……………………………....Gold Coast Show................……………….....1977
Highly Commended in junior section…………………....Nerang Festival of Arts.............……………..1978
1st prize in the monochrome drawing section………Fraser Coast Show................…………………2004
3rd prize in the drawing section…………………………..Royal Queensland Show...............………….2004
The Neumann Family Award (best in show)….…….Springfest Art & Craft Festival...........………2004
1st prize in the drawing section………………………....Goldrush Art Exhibition..............………………2004
1st prize in the drawing section……………………......Gwydir Art Show...........….……………………...2004
1st prize in the drawing section………………...........Goondiwindi Art Show.....………………………...2005
1st prize in the photography section (novice)…...Fraser Coast Show..........……………………....2005
1st prize in the monochrome drawing section……..Fraser Coast Show...........…...…………………2005
Grand Champion of the fine art exhibit………………..Fraser Coast Show................…………………2005
S.C.O.P.E. Award for Excellence………………..........Sarina Art Show..........…………………………….2005
1st prize in the drawing section…………….............Nanango Art Show.....…………….…………………2005
2nd prize in the drawing section……………............Royal Queensland Show...…………………….....2005
Highly Commended in the drawing section……......Springfest Art & craft Show....……..………...2005
Commended Overall……………………………….............Ryde Art Exhibition...........…….…………………2005
1st prize in the drawing section……………............Goldrush Art Exhibition.....…………….……………2005
Highly Commended in the drawing section…….....Gwydir Art Show...........…………………………...2005
Highly Commended Overall………….....................Rotary Club of Sorrento Annual Art Show....2006
Best Any Other Medium……………………….............Ballan Art Show..........………….…………………...2006
1st prize in the drawing section……………...........Goondiwindi Art Show.....…………..……………...2006
1st prize in the monochrome drawing section…...Fraser Coast Show...........………………………..2006
1st prize in the drawing section……………….........Maryborough Heritage City Art Festival...……2006
1st prize in the drawing section………………….......Gold Coast Show............………..…………………2006
1st prize in monochrome drawing section……..............Fraser Coast Show………….................2007
Grand Champion of the fine art exhibit……..................Fraser Coast Show…………...............…2007
2nd prize in the hand carved section…………...............Fraser Coast Show…………...............…2007
1st prize in the hand carved section…………................Royal Queensland Show……….............2007
1st prize in the sculpture section……………..................Gold Coast Show……………..................2007
1st prize in the drawing section…………......................Ernest Henry Memorial Art Show.........2007
H.C. in the sculpture section……………….....................Springfest Art & Craft Festival…..........2007
1st prize in the drawing section……………....................Springfest Art & Craft Festival….........2007
The Neumann Family Award (Best in Show)................Springfest Art & Craft Festival...........2007
1st prize in the monochrome drawing section...............Fraser Coast Show......................2008
1st prize in the drawing section.........................Maryborough Heritage City Art Festival....2008
1st prize in the drawing section.........................Royal Queensland Show........................2008
-1st prize in the drawing section..........................Gold Coast Show................................2008
-Overall Best Exhibit...........................................Gold Coast Show.................................2008
-3rd prize in the drawing section.....................Ernest Henry Memorial Art Show..................2008

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Making decisions and setting parameters before starting a work is very important to me. Inspiration is one thing but you have to set up the picture before you even start on it by deciding on things. This might sound a bit simple, but some of the most important things in life are.

In this case I wanted to draw something in monochrome which would be the best thing I could possibly do, plus some. This means for one thing, the time it takes from start to finish must be unlimited. You can't plan on doing the best thing you've ever done in your life, but give yourself a deadline of only a week or a month.

Consequently each of these drawings have taken hundreds and hundreds of hours over many months to complete. You have to decide on a scale of detail. I decided to draw absolutely everything, it nearly drives me mad sometimes, but I've noticed the most frustrating bits of a drawing (the bits that make you angry, and sick in the stomach until you get it right, sometimes weekslater) are the ones that make it a masterpiece instead of just a good drawing. For example there's no point in taking six months to draw the engine, but three days to draw the front wheel just because you're sick of doing it and want the whole drawing to be finished. I can draw a motorbike in two minutes that will look ok, but it won't look like the drawings in these prints.

Different decisions were made in the start and stuck to.

It's the same with perspective and proportions. I've only ever drawn freehand, all my life, because I believe that fine art, by definition, must be freehand (no tracing, gridding, measuring, or projecting whatsoever). You have to have beliefs before you can make decisions and you have to make decisions to do something the best you can.

Then there's quality, which far from being an intangible is really just one more parameter you have to set. I decided from the start to really push my own boundaries, the whole time, and not set a ceilingon how well a certain subject had to be drawn to be good enough. When I decided to live in that zone, I realized it is the mental side to the sea of pain.

Sometimes I rub things out twenty times or more, or spend two days detailing a small part of the picture, only to rub the whole section out because things are slightly wrong, even when I know I might be the only one that ever knows or notices.

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Drawing classes by Brett A. Jones available at the Sea of Pain Fine Art Production Studio in Hervey Bay, QLD. Classes are held every Saturday and Sunday. Morning sessions: 9:00am - 12:00pm, afternoon sessions: 1:00pm - 4:00pm, cost is $25 per 3hr session.

if you wish to enquire, please ring (07) 41 287 682 or email art@seaofpain.com

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Exhibition grade framing is available to customers within Australia. All framing is done to exacting standards by Alan from “Out of the Square Picture Framing”, Main St. Pialba, QLD.

All Sea of Pain Fine Art Productions prints are framed using 30mm black timber moulding, reflective glass (non-reflective glass obscures fine detail), top quality acid-free matte board surround, acid-free core board backing, metal ‘D’rings, and sash cord.
Your framed print will be securely packed in polystyrene and triple-ply cardboard and will be posted or couriered (depending on size of order and location) to your front door.

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Brett A. Jones’ multi-award winning original freehand work.
Please e-mail brett@seaofpain.com for payment and delivery enquiries

“Vee-Three”, original freehand graphite drawing by Brett A. Jones
Unframed- 7”x 5” (175mm x 130mm)
Framed- 11”x 9” (280mm x 230mm)

(Framed) comes with hand written letter of authenticity……………$ 200 AUD