Jonas Wood's Clippings series is an exploration that extends his fascination with plants, integrating them within his broader artistic practice. This series, characterized by its colorful, graphic flatness, brings together "clippings" of plants, showcasing segments of plant forms that Wood has either encountered in his personal life or appropriated from other artworks. By focusing on clippings, Wood creates a dialogue not only with the plants themselves but also with the history of art and modernist practices (Karma).
The Clippings series was prominently featured in a dedicated exhibition at the Lever House in New York from September 27, 2013, to January 4, 2014. This exhibition allowed viewers to engage directly with Wood's vibrant and stylized representations of plant life, further blurring the lines between still life and landscape through his distinctive, flattened perspectives (David Kordansky Gallery).
Wood's approach to the Clippings series and his work, in general, reflects a deep engagement with the tradition of collage, drawing from a variety of sources including his own photography, found images, and the works of artists who have influenced him, such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. This method of assembly allows Wood to navigate between abstraction and representation, playing with scale and perspective while maintaining a sense of personal connection to each piece. The series not only highlights Wood's interest in the decorative and the everyday but also serves as a meditation on his relationship with the subjects he chooses to portray, from the intimate spaces of his studio to the broader scope of modernist art history (Gagosian) (Karma).
The publication accompanying the Clippings series by Karma and Wood Kusaka Studios in 2017, with 48 pages of Wood's plant paintings, further underscores the significance of this body of work within Wood's oeuvre. It not only offers insight into his creative process but also situates the series within the larger context of his exploration of the intersections between art and life, modernism, and the everyday (Karma).