GARY JAMES

(b. 1941 Slough, UK)

Gary M. James was born near London and raised in post-war Kenya. He was art eductaed in 1960's London and spent 30 years as the medical artist at the University of Bristol. Through the 1970's he showed non-medical paintings regularly at the Royal West of England Academy, drawing increasingly on his experiences of Africa, North to South. His first hang at the 1980 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London was the TV "pick of the show", the same occuring at the RWA in 1986.

The pan-African fine detail content of his large narrative paintings added to his developing use of carved, interactive frames (to impart a sense of "being there") attracted the largest crowds for his "River Market" at the RA in 1990. 

1997 saw his first solo exhibition at the Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg. His Voyage to the Interior painting on board depicts a WWI North Sea airship and continues, with diversions, on board the steamboat Douanier Rousseau. This plies between his Cave Market in North Africa and the sub-Saharan River Market along the Simahali po pote (nowhere) River.

Gary James now lives in the Dordogne, France and shares a studio and workshop with his artist son, Alexander (Alex) James.