zen james

"Every child is an artist...the problem is how to remain an artist after one grows up." Pablo Picasso said that. "Play as much as you can, work as much as you want, love and laugh equally, and turn it all into art." I said that.This world is a strange place for artists, requiring a certain flexibility and diversity in what we can, and are willing, to do to support and further our artistic endeavors. I have a very eclectic background that runs the gamut from motion pictures to museums. I have been a graphic designer, a photographer and a writer. I have restored WW II airplanes, owned an art gallery, a health spa and a publishing company, and I am currently under contract to a law firm in Montana as an expert witness on a federal aviation lawsuit. I write short stories and dabble in poetry because it’s fun, but primarily I am an artist...all the rest are just things that I have done, or still do, in between paintings.I have studied comparative religion extensively and think of myself as a JewishChristianBuddhist, although these days, the Zen part of me seems to take the leading role. I am also a certified master in Johrei Reiki. The display name I use, 'zen james' was a character in a series of short stories, written some years ago by a good friend, Cash Edwards. The characters were all based on our friends, artists and writers, who were hanging out in Hollywood back when making movies was fun. I have been called both easygoing and outspoken, spiritual and profane, comfortable and profoundly annoying, optimistic and apocalyptic. Many of my paintings have been described in similar enigmatic terms. Check out 'VIEW MY PICS' to see some of them. I usually work with oils, rather large, in what I term “stylized realism.” These paintings are complex, personal and highly symbolic. Since my relocation to Southern California, I’ve been developing a new series of California lifestyle/Palm Springs paintings, using acrylics and an airbrush, which concentrate on the interaction of light and water. Now, some new paintings are coming out...I like to think of these new ones as ‘little moments of Zen’ where the incongruities of life combine in such a way that you just have to take a moment to wonder. Some of them ask questions but, like any good Zen koan, there may be a dozen answers and no answer at all. For subject matter these days, I usually turn to the collection of chatzkies and unusual objects that inhabit my world…which, as I chose to live in a small, chaotic and rather random universe, makes this series somewhat of a continuing self portrait, once removed. I have taken this new way of seeing and working with light and color that the water/light pieces gave me, and applied it to a more introspective subject matter and style that is a little strange, a little whimsical and, some say, a little twisted…a return to my earlier work but with a new, more accessible state of mind.