Born in Texas in 1977 to an American father and an Arab-American mother of Levantine heritage, Rula Jones moved with her family to London during early childhood before later settling in the Washington, D.C. area, where she attended middle and high school. She relocated to New York City to study studio art, living and working there for nearly a decade before returning to the Washington, D.C. region, where she joined the faculty of The Corcoran College of Art + Design. She currently lives and works in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Jones is a visual artist, educator, curator, and publisher with over fifteen years of experience spanning higher education, K–12 classrooms, museum programming, and contemporary art spaces. Her teaching appointments have included The Corcoran College of Art + Design, the Brooklyn Children's Museum, and McLean Project for the Arts, where she developed curricula integrating studio practice with art history, visual culture, and critical inquiry.
She is the founder of Gallery 115 and the AIR Studio Program at the Y Art Center in Frederick, Maryland, and previously served as Gallery Director at BlackRock Center for the Arts, where she curated exhibitions and developed interdisciplinary arts programming. She is also the founder and director of Prism Press, an independent publishing platform dedicated to contemporary art and global dialogue. Through Prism Press, she produces exhibition catalogues, organizes virtual exhibitions, and supports artists from around the world through curated projects and publications.
Drawing remains the foundation of Jones's studio practice. Working in graphite, watercolor, and acrylic, she creates psychologically driven compositions in which memory, intuition, and symbolism converge. Figures, animals, and recurring motifs become vessels for emotional and psychological states, examining the relationship between inner experience and the external world. Alongside her fine art practice, she writes and illustrates children's books, extending her visual language into narrative form.
Growing up between cultures, Jones's work explores themes of identity, isolation, memory, resilience, existentialism, and the surreal complexities of the human experience.
Jones is a visual artist, educator, curator, and publisher with over fifteen years of experience spanning higher education, K–12 classrooms, museum programming, and contemporary art spaces. Her teaching appointments have included The Corcoran College of Art + Design, the Brooklyn Children's Museum, and McLean Project for the Arts, where she developed curricula integrating studio practice with art history, visual culture, and critical inquiry.
She is the founder of Gallery 115 and the AIR Studio Program at the Y Art Center in Frederick, Maryland, and previously served as Gallery Director at BlackRock Center for the Arts, where she curated exhibitions and developed interdisciplinary arts programming. She is also the founder and director of Prism Press, an independent publishing platform dedicated to contemporary art and global dialogue. Through Prism Press, she produces exhibition catalogues, organizes virtual exhibitions, and supports artists from around the world through curated projects and publications.
Drawing remains the foundation of Jones's studio practice. Working in graphite, watercolor, and acrylic, she creates psychologically driven compositions in which memory, intuition, and symbolism converge. Figures, animals, and recurring motifs become vessels for emotional and psychological states, examining the relationship between inner experience and the external world. Alongside her fine art practice, she writes and illustrates children's books, extending her visual language into narrative form.
Growing up between cultures, Jones's work explores themes of identity, isolation, memory, resilience, existentialism, and the surreal complexities of the human experience.