His method of creating this beautiful melancholy we gradually realize that his naturalistic pictures have a deeper meaning, in that all beauty is spiritual in its nature. James’s studies during the years he spent with Chicago Imagists Michiko Itantani and Phil Hanson in the Advanced Painting Studios at SAIC were enhanced by concurrently working under Peggy McNamara, Artist in Residence at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. Whether it’s a finely manicured graphite portrait or a painting of old growth urban decay he found that the most adequate way to convey emotion is through the laws of logical linear composition developed by the Renaissance in a neoclassical fashion. For James, life is in flux all things must change; his life’s revolutions are built on the dark shadows of an uneasy and difficult life.
His love of the use of line in his compositions alludes to some emotionally determined draftsmanship, achieving a semblance of reality that a photograph could never give. In other words, although the effect of the work is generally realistic, it is achieved by expressive means that have nothing in common with merely imitative, superficial renderings of reality.
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