Poppy Jones is one of the most-searched artists of the year, featured in Artnet’s latest Intelligence Report.
It was in the depths of early motherhood that British artist Poppy Jones observed everyday domesticity take on an “almost surreal” quality. Dropping all other projects, she rushed to translate the feeling into a series of eerily timeless still lifes.
“I like to catch those moments when something represents an internal state of mind,” Jones said during a recent visit to her studio in the southern English coastal town of Eastbourne. She cited the modernist Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni and women Surrealists like Eileen Agar and Ithell Colquhoun as inspiration.
Though apparently simple depictions of flowers, a glass of water, or a zipped up jacket, these images are not all as they seem. Cropped photographic images are mono printed onto found materials, like silk or suede, and further developed using watercolor paints. What results are “dislocated” images that float like a film over the material. For Jones, this process captures something of the mystery inherent to image-making.
“With digital technology we experience the world through a lot of images that we don’t really understand,” she explained. “It’s hard to know if things are real or not.”
Poppy Jones, Last Days (2023). Photo: Andy Keate, courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London, © Poppy Jones.
This ambiguity may be why Jones’s still lifes have so readily resonated. Jones’s work sits at an unlikely intersection: these demure paintings are commanding serious demand. Collector interest in Jones has skyrocketed over the past year, as noted in Artnet News’s latest Intelligence Report, where Jones has made it onto our “Zero to Hero” list charting artists who have had a major jump in searches on our Artnet Price Database. Her auction debut last May at Phillips New York saw one painting on suede, Hours (2022), more than triple its high estimate to fetch $48,260 (including buyer’s fees). Her auction record currently sits at just over $60,000 for Shell (2022), offered last fall by Phillips London, according to Artnet’s Price Database.
Art Close at Hand
Having initially gained traction on Instagram, Jones first caught the eye of London’s South Parade gallery, where her still lifes debuted in 2021. Jones has since joined the roster of Zurich’s Mai 36 and London’s trendy Herald St and received regular solo shows in Los Angeles courtesy of Mrs. Gallery in 2022 and Overduin and Co in 2023 and 2025.
Following their 2024 institutional debut in the group show “The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain” at Pallant House in Chichester, England, Jones’s still lifes have earned their first solo exhibition, “Frozen Sun” at Towner Eastbourne, which opened this March. This is followed next month with a feature in the group show “Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today” at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge.
Poppy Jones, Lemon (Eclipse) (2025). Photo: Jackson White, courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London, © Poppy Jones.
Jones’s work sits alongside that of several prominent peers, most notably Issy Wood, whose best-selling works at auction remain her closely-cropped items of clothing painted on velvet. The emphasis on textural effects also brings to mind the shimmering shirts and sparkling wine glasses of in-demand artist Louise Giovanelli, who similarly conjures enigma from surprising crops. Visit any contemporary art fair in 2026 and you likely won’t be more than a stone’s throw away from a cinematic still life.
For Jones, the pivot to still life was born of necessity. Caring full-time for her infant son during the 2020 lockdown, the artist had initially felt unmoored without her usual access to high-tech printing facilities, with which she was at that time producing densely collaged works. Then, came the liberating realization that she “had nothing to lose” from simply making art from whatever was closest to hand.
Until that moment, Jones had been buried in a particularly laborious, time-intensive approach to printmaking, developed over more than a decade spent diligently studying a range of obscure techniques. In 2015, she followed up an MA at the Royal College of Art in London with a residency at West Dean College, housed in the former estate of Edward Jones, a legendary patron of the Surrealists. It was immersed in his collection that Jones dove into the school’s somewhat eccentric curriculum, which specializes in dying crafts.
Poppy Jones, Winter Scene (2025). Photo: Jackson White, courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London, © Poppy Jones.
While experimenting with stone lithography, an old school printing method using ancient, fossilized limestone and grease, Jones began to appreciate process as a kind of “ritual” that felt “like magic.” How, over a sequence of steps, could she make an image appear?
A New Approach
Ultimately, however, come lockdown, Jones realized she had “been getting too bogged down in the technical side of things.” A radically pared down approach brought with it a clean break from her previous style, which had become overly esoteric and was failing to inspire much commercial or institutional interest.
The real revelation came courtesy of a beloved old suede jacket from the 1930s that was starting to fall apart. Jones placed the item in an aluminum frame in her studio and contemplated it over several months. “I loved the contrast between the timelessness of the metal and the suede that had so many marks, so much history,” she said. “For ages I wanted to make something that was an object on its own.”
Poppy Jones, Leather Jacket (2025). Photo: Jackson White, courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London, © Poppy Jones.
Inspiration eventually struck. Jones, who had previously been working on paper, decided to try printing an image of a suede jacket onto scraps of the same jacket. This bizarre “doubling” of an illusion with a real object had the effect of “immortalizing and destroying at the same time.” Jones pulled off the same trick with a silk shirt and has since been accumulating drawers full of offcuts and cheap eBay finds. These line the walls of an otherwise uncluttered studio in the basement of Jones’s family home, of which the majestic centerpiece is her printing press.
Jones’s first institutional solo at Towner Eastbourne features a mix of older, monochromatic pieces and some new works in more naturalistic color schemes. The oxymoronic title of “Frozen Sun” evokes the cold natural light that floods the work, while also hinting at otherworldly origins. Where do these “remnants” come from? Jones leaves the viewer guessing.
“Frozen Sun” is on view at Towner Eastbourne in Eastbourne through May 31. “Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today” goes on view at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge from April 25 through September 6.
