Slade Brook Trail in the Fall Painting

James looks for visual metaphors or abstraction that resolves or comes into focus, as the work manifests into its own reality. He engages with the materials and the imagery that transform into a reflection of the moment of making the art. The artwork becomes an experience unto itself that blends with our current reality, creating a visual explanation of ideas that often offer a new viewpoint. James studied Art & Design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and was fortunate to have many influential professors during studies there. John Pai, was a key influence on an interest to combine two and three-dimensions, and use of linear elements in space. He was a painting student with Mary Buckley Parriott, who studied with Hans Hoffman, and the Yale influence of Josef Albers. He worked at her studio in Huntington Bay, New York. Other key fine art professors he studied with were Faust, Bove, and Sonenberg. In 1998 James was appointed to the faculty at Pratt Institute, School of Art & Design, and have since balanced being an educator, designer and an artist. Many of his art pieces are in private collections in the USA and Italy, and he shows new artwork regularly in New England and Brooklyn, NY.