About Jonathan Glass

Jonathan Glass is a fine artist/illustrator who specializes in drawing live concert sketches in real time. Since college, Jonathan has had the ambition on creating drawings that span a good portion of musical history. Through his experiences, Jonathan has really expanded his sense of community amongst many greats, many of whom are friends.

At first Jonathan used to go backstage to get autographs and learn about each musicians’ background. His love for jazz expanded as did Jonathan album collection. Jonathan prides himself for seeking the acquired tastes in music as well as the popular choices in all genres. While his style evolved with time, Jonathan is always considering pictorial language of musical bodies in movement. This movement is both rhythmic and informed by the music Jonathan listens to. His schooling had achieved the same fluidity whether drawing old folks in nursing homes in Buffalo, or dancers in practice at the Martha Graham Dance School.

Jonathan considers amongst his influences:  Claude Lorraine, Rico LeBrun, Romare Bearden, Raoul Dufy, Richard Diebenkorn, Alice Neel, David Stone Martin, George Grosz, Hans Hoffman, Faith Ringold, LeRoy Nieman, and Zechin period brush painters from Japan. While Jonathan has kept his influences close to his vest, he tries to remain impressionable to new styles and innovations as they apply to his unique way of interpolating sound into visuals. He feels that one can never stop being a student as long as art is a way of life.

This website is created as a means to fund a book project that has spanned over 30 years of drawings live concerts. The bulk of the proceeds derived from selling originals and prints will help in producing a prodigious volume of Jonathan’s sketches in the form of a coffee table book. It has been a goal of Jonathan’s to publish a work that shows the eclectic journey through mostly jazz, but sometimes rock, folk, bluegrass, country, Latin, classical, and Avant-garde.

Beyond the scope of this book, Jonathan hopes to work on two more projects: a panoramic book of big bands & large ensembles, and a memorial book detailing many involved in music that were lost during the span of COVID epidemic. It is with Civic duty that Jonathan would like to pay respects to the changed landscape with the absence of the musicians that have meant so much to the world at large and to him.