Volcanic – Stuart Jones' Abstract Eruption of Chaos and Climate

Painting, Oil on Canvas. Size: 122 W x 244 H x 5 D cm

There’s something beautifully violent about Volcanic, a piece that doesn’t so much sit on the wall as it erupts off it. Stuart Jones, a UK-based painter with a fascination for the natural world and its uneasy relationship with human existence, has created a visual landslide of energy, texture, and motion. Towering at 244cm in height, this oil and mixed-media canvas is less of a painting and more of a force of nature—a window into the raw power of geomorphic processes.

Jones describes his work as exploring the Anthropocene—the era in which human activity has left an indelible mark on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems. This isn’t just an abstract composition; it’s a statement. Volcanic pulsates with tension, a seismic clash between organic and synthetic elements. The fiery orange slab in the foreground bleeds like lava, jagged and unstable, while the upper half of the painting simmers with smoky blues and greys, as if the atmosphere itself is thick with impending doom.

Lines scrawl and fracture across the canvas, black like fissures in rock, red like tectonic shifts in motion. There’s an overwhelming sense of movement—shifting, grinding, and colliding. Jones’ layering of oil paint, spray paint, and marker creates an interplay of depth and texture, the fluidity of his glazes contrasting with the sharper, more aggressive forms. The absence of the human figure is telling; instead, we’re left with an empty, volatile world, as if to say, this is what remains when we’re gone.

Jones has long grappled with utopian and dystopian themes in his work, and Volcanic sits uneasily between the two. Is it destruction or renewal? A warning or a celebration of nature’s untameable force? There’s something exhilarating about its ambiguity, its refusal to be easily categorised. This isn’t just a painting—it’s a landscape on the brink, a vision of a world both beautiful and terrifying in its flux.

Whether Volcanic leaves you in awe or unease, one thing is certain: it demands attention. Like the earth beneath our feet, Jones’ work is restless, shifting, and unapologetically alive.

The painting is available to buy on Saatchi Art.