Jeff Jones (artist)
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Jeffrey Catherine Jones (born January 10, 1944 in Atlanta, GA) was a very popular science fiction and fantasy illustrator during the 1960's and early '70s. Among the books he did covers for were the Ace paperback editions of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series and Andre Norton's Postmarked the Stars. At the time he was competing with Roy G. Krenkel who had a tight almost J. Allen St. John-ish style and Frank Frazetta. There were strong similarities and differences between Frazetta and Jones. Both tended to stage their scenes in stylized spaces, both showed a strong color sense which made both artists' work memorable. Frazetta's men were burlier, his women more buxom than Jones's. They are both very excellent draftsmen.
For a period during the early 1970's he also contributed illustrations to Ted White's Fantastic.
In the early 1970's when National Lampoon began publication, he had a strip in it for a while called Idyl. Despite the credibility this gave him with comic strip fans, and the fact that in the late seventies and early eighties, he shared a studio with Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith, Michael Kaluta and other cartoonists his popularity began to fade as his work evolved; his figures became less ethereal and his colors and textures more intense. Cartoonists Walter Simonson and J. D. King said at the time this was because of his growing interest in Expressionists.
As noted on 'Sequential Tart'[1], in the late 1990s, Jones confronted some personal problems and, after considerable medical tests and consultations, had a sex change operation. In 2001, she experienced a nervous breakdown, and lost her home and workspace. Since 2004, she has her own apartment, and is again producing work.
