Rula Jones

Visiting Lecturer

Born in Texas in 1977, Rula Jones is a visual artist, educator, curator, and writer whose work explores identity, isolation, memoir, resilience, and the surreal complexity of human experience. Growing up between the United Kingdom and the United States within a multicultural family, she draws upon experiences of living between cultures to create psychologically charged narratives that blur the boundaries between the ordinary and the fantastical. Fantasy functions not as an escape from reality, but as a catalyst for emotional states, allowing inner experience to take visible form through symbolism, metaphor, and narrative.

Jones has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the ICON Illustration Conference Gallery Exhibition in New York, the Peace Museum in Vienna, Santa Maria dello Spasimo in Palermo, the WAV Venice Audio-Visual Show, Millepiani Gallery in Rome, the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, PRAXIS Gallery in the United Kingdom, and the McLean Project for the Arts, where she presented the solo exhibition Ousia. Her work has also been featured in publications including The Huffington Post, A5 Magazine, The Esthetic Apostle, and The Emerson Review.

Alongside her studio practice, Jones has curated numerous exhibitions exploring contemporary art and social themes, including Planet A, Hand Crafted, DISSENT, WIT, and LORE. She has received awards and grants from the James M. Green Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts through the Frederick Arts Council, the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s Change, Inc. She has also participated in artist residencies at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in New York, the Ora Lerman Charitable Trust in Pennsylvania, and the Centre Pompadour in Ércourt, France.

With more than two decades of teaching experience, Jones has taught at institutions including the Corcoran College of Art + Design, the McLean Project for the Arts, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington. Her teaching emphasizes creativity, critical inquiry, and the development of a strong visual voice through both technical skill and conceptual exploration.