Martin Jones

Martin has a tendency to draw and scribble - the surfaces of our studio are often littered with piles of paper, covered in doodles of figures in action, designs and verbatim quotes from meetings.

Martin’s notebooks and piles of drawings go back through a career in which he has approached film making, advertising and theatre all through the eyes of an artist - picking up from his co-creators the analytical mindset and ingenuity that get things made with the resources available.

Martin believes in beauty - and its power to repair and inspire. This belief brings with it a painful understanding of how beauty can be driven out if you carelessly forget what it is like to be a human being in a real space, where real light falls in a real moment in time.

Sometimes Martin’s drawings find their way directly onto the walls of Art in Site’s schemes, but more often they are his way of exchanging ideas - with the in-house team of designers he encourages - and with the artists and craftspeople that Art in Site draw into their schemes.

Drawing, for Martin is also a way of ‘drawing out’ the needs and aspirations of the clients we serve, and the patients and students and visitors our clients serve in their turn, encouraging them to go beyond a ‘shopping’ mindset to a transformational mindset. For this to happen, words are never enough, because only in a drawing can you begin to see what situation will be, not only what you wish it to be.

Martin is delighted that the tasks that our clients bring to Art in Site are so varied. He likes to get involved as early as possible, to try and help work out what is essential. He’s an enthusiast for mixing the depth of experience that comes from working with materials and the ability to put yourself in another person’s place. Perhaps this is why the subject of his scribbles are often not the colours, images, furniture or lighting that will become Art in Site’s design, but people encountering and experiencing that design, or simply encountering each other in the scenery that the designs create, because the real focus is imagining what those people feel.

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