Jim Cone (b.1951) likens himself to the nursery rhyme character Humpty Dumpty, an egg so badly broken that “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.” Despite the odds however, he has put the pieces of his life back together. I shall explain…
We meet in Cone’s Talahi Island home studio, packed to the gills with his paintings, sculpture, drawings, and collection of guitars, as well as prints and paintings by his mother, artist Peggy Cone, who showed her work for over thirty years in Galley 209 on River Street. He comes by his talent naturally. He tells me he has always enjoyed painting and sketching, but a passion for surfing and hanging out at the beach took up most of his attention during his teen years.
After attending the then-called Armstrong College, Cone worked for an engineering firm before embarking on a lengthy career at Savannah Electric, now Georgia Power. Always painting part-time, he sold watercolor marshscapes through shops on River Street in the 80’s. Deciding that the commercial side of selling art was detracting from his creativity, and that there was no joy in production, he vowed to no longer accept commissions and began painting just for himself, without concern about selling. (Hence, the packed-to-the-rafters piles of work in the roof space above his studio!)
Cone is one of those people who equally employs his right brain and his left. He reports that the marketing folks at Savannah Electric always tried to tap into his creativity: “They’d say, ‘Let’s ask Jim! He’s the ideas man.’” Every morning he analyzes the global financial and commodities markets and manages his financial portfolio before going into the studio to paint.
Best known for his highly colorful, unique, Cubist style, Cone says that it grew out of his passion for the intriguing geometry he employed in his draftsman career. He loved mechanical drawing, and his first job was a technical draftsman for Hussey, Gay & Bell engineering where he excelled in intricate, measured drawings, while also painting renderings and creating concept drawings for their subsidiary land planning company.
Later, Cone learned about Picasso, Braque, and Cezanne, and how Cezanne simplified natural forms to their geometric foundation of cones, spheres, and cylinders. Like the Cubists, he paints people, landscapes and objects as though seeing them from multiple angles at once. He likes to say, “Picasso kicked the door of Cubism open, and I walked through and went my own way."
We look at his ongoing series of Tybee nudes where he simultaneously presents different views of the body from varied positions and emphasizes the angles of the figure. He enjoys celebrating the female form, but rather than maintain a single perspective of the body, Cone employs simple geometric forms and interlocking planes let us see all sides at one time.
He often has narratives for his paintings, and discusses another collection, “called my Universal series. I like to paint concepts that mankind has held throughout all time and throughout all cultures.” For example, we look at “Star Gazer,” a multi-faceted man looking up at the majesty and the mystery of the Milky Way with one eye painted to look like a domed celestial observatory. In another entitled “Star Catcher,” a figure gazes out at future dreams while holding a wicker basket of caught stars which represent dreams already fulfilled.
Cone paints in oils and acrylics, often applying them with a palette knife to get even more angles and textures, and he regularly incorporates collage elements such as crushed brick, pottery shards, or pieces of flattened metal he finds on streets and sidewalks. Many of his skyscapes, marshes, and palm trees are composed of scraps torn from the paper towels he uses to clean off his brushes. He saves the towels, tearing off pieces in shades of blue for the sky, or in shades of green for the marsh or foliage.
The prolific painter also portrays Cubist-style, vividly colored townscapes and cityscapes, many inspired by Savannah’s squares, fountains, bridge, or iconic buildings. Additionally, he makes sculptures and assemblages from found objects, driftwood, and even from the wooden factory scraps provided by his friend Howard Paul, President & CEO of Benedetto Guitars. I particularly admire a Picasso-like bull he fashioned from this wood, the sculpture seemingly a natural progression and three-dimensional rendering of his Cubist paintings. And he finds time to write and record music. No longer able to sing of course, he still plays from time to time with his neighbor, local musician and songwriter Jason Bible.
Back to the Humpty Dumpty simile…Cone retired from Georgia Power following treatment for a near-fatal tongue cancer. Today, with part of his jaw removed, his speech is muffled and hard to make out at times. He shows me a collaged painting where the pieces of broken eggshell represent his cancer and his physical brokenness, but they have been put back together again.
This painting of the restored Humpty Dumpty will be the cover of a book he is finishing up (yes, he writes too!) about being medically broken but able to pick up the pieces and get back on the wall. The self-help manuscript, almost complete, deals with human brokenness in all its forms, whether it be through addiction or through being financially emotionally, mentally, spiritually, or heart broken.
In the past Cone regularly participated in art fairs, including one appearance in the defunct juried Telfair Art Fair, and he had a major exhibition of his work at now-closed 24-e furniture store on Broughton Street in 2017. Today, he mostly sells to collector friends, but regularly participates in the Savannah Local Artists Market because he loves organizer Charlie Ellis and supports his vision of “an art venue that reflects the art community in a way that gives opportunity to the novice artists to show their work and gain experience, while also providing a venue for Savannah’s more seasoned artists to exhibit their unique works.”
Like his Cubist style, there are many, many sides to Jim Cone: painter, sculptor, financial analyst, soon-to-be-published author, and musician! Meet him at this Saturday’s SLAM, between 10 and 4pm in the ballfield behind the Salvation Army at 3000 Bee Road. Cone rarely updates his website, conecollection.com, so the best way to contact him is via email at [email protected].
