For James, painting is almost like solving a puzzle or putting together a puzzle that has been fragmented. And sometimes he begins solving these visual puzzles by painting with his eyes closed. The results are abstract paintings that are pure, beautiful works with stark, slow gradations of color like doorways or portals into the unknown which conjure vast, deep space, that is gently disrupted by the immediacy on the surface of his sweeping gestural marks.

James is a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where he remains both a mentor and Alumni Board member. He is well known as an abstract painter and long-time artist with Circa Gallery in Minneapolis, and he has had two shows at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Along with his successful visual art practice, James is co-founder of Kinetic Legacy and partner and principal designer at Kinetic Contemporary, the interior design and art consulting division of Kinetic Design Build. James has had a long career in creating physical and conceptual structures that allow a space to do its job most efficiently. Whether it’s designing floor layouts that use color and shape to guide customers through major department stores, building functional closets and storage areas out of the formerly unused nooks and crannies in a client’s home or conceiving of a digital platform to house stories and memories that would otherwise be lost to time, James understands how to create structures that are multidimensional, intuitive, and approachable.