My husband, Peter Jones, who has died aged 83, was a prolific artist of colour and light, best known for his Colourscape walk-in installations, each a series of interlinked chambers of translucent PVC, creating space with pure colour. He was also a mathematician and hang-glider pilot, and interested in science, meditation and spirituality.
Following studies in the early 1960s at St Martin’s School of Art in London – where he was influenced by the De Stijl movement – Peter made architectural constructions, which he termed Spaceplaces, within buildings and galleries, using coloured panels and rods. Working with his fellow artist Maurice Agis, he had shows at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, and at the Stedelijk, Amsterdam, and in 1967 they jointly won the Netherlands’ Sikkens prize for use of colour. They continued to collaborate until 1977.
Wanting his art to be accessible to a wider audience, Peter began to work outside. He realised the powerful effect of daylight transmitted through primary-coloured material and experimented with air-inflated, interconnected domes that people went inside. He called this installation Spaceplace, Towards a Colour Village, and it was first exhibited outside the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 1971, followed by 25 shows touring the UK over three years.
His work evolved in 1974 into Colourscape, with a long-running show at Battersea Park, London, in 1977 and 1978, as well as on Blackheath and in other parts of the UK.
Peter and I met in the mid 1970s and became partners in 1977 (we married in 2011), moving to Wales the following year where we collaborated on much larger Colourscapes. Thirty-five structures were made by 2012, showing every year in the UK and internationally. Colourscapes have been visited by many thousands of people, the immersion in colour providing intense perceptual and emotional experiences.
In 1989 we formed a partnership with the composers Simon Desorgher and Lawrence Casserly, creating the Colourscape music festivals and receiving commissions from the Arts Council. Together we developed the 1995 Colourscape of 100 chambers, Peter’s largest work, incorporating a cathedral-like performance space, where orchestras, dancers and musicians led the public on an extraordinary journey. This has continued annually on Clapham Common, in south London, and elsewhere.
Other work involved making large geodesic spheres for performance, designing installations of colour and sound specifically for children with special educational needs, and developing experimental projects at Aberystwyth Arts Centre.
Peter was born in Hilsea, Portsmouth, to Dorothy (nee Walters), who worked as a cashier in a butcher’s shop, and Charles Jones, an RAF engineer. The family moved several times before setting in London where Peter went to Harrow grammar school and then Welbeck college in Leicestershire for the sixth form. After St Martin’s, he established a studio, Space Structure Workshop, in the old Woolwich dockyard in south-east London in 1963. He gave courses on colour, and also taught in London art schools until 1978. He leaves a legacy of extraordinary notebooks and paintings.
Peter is survived by me and our son, Gabriel, by his three children, Jake, Ellen and Lorna, from his first marriage, in 1961, to Jane Bailey, which ended in divorce, and by six grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and his brother Roger.
