Imagery
Great variety of imagery is evident in my book. In this regard my guiding principle has been that one's art should reflect one's entire life experience. The works of Picasso, Max Beckmann, Kitaj, and James Weeks are examples of this practice. I recognize the continuity of my sensibility throughout my work despite changes in approach to varied subjects. As imagery changes, the form of the work often changes as well: a painting about marital difficulty is conceived in a very different form sense from a painting about the leaves and rocks at the bottom of an ice cold spring. My approach to form and color is an adjustment to the emotional core of the image. My approach has been conditioned by a conviction that style can be a kind of tyranny. This modernist notion of style can subsume the subject matter and the emotional import of the work into the domination of a highly recognizable and repetitious form language. While I have striven for visual intelligence and technical competence, my work is equally about life and art. As for originality, I believe that it is inevitable in a personal sense if the work is authentic and the result of constant inquiry, and not a conscious decision to be different from others. Originality in a historic sense is for others to determine over time.

Themes
Several themes continue to cycle through my work over the years:

Personal experience of immediate events, people, and environment: grief, friendship, portrait, divorce, love, yearning, etc.

Cultural lore: Myth, folk-tales, religious paradigms, drama, film, and parables have informed much of my work.

Social commentary: I have always rejected violence and the abuse of power; I have been on the side of the victim. War, environmental abuse, gender abuse, and other violations of people and the planet have been part of my imagery for years. I did paintings against the war in Viet Nam in the late sixties, a few of which are included in my book.

Nature: Although I have worked with traditional landscape, a more nontraditional form has emerged in my recent work. The recent work is more representationally intimate, and has a strong abstract component as well. I find the forms and processes of nature are unusually surprising, unexpected, incongruous, and at times, unbelievable and unknowable. The elements of apparent chance and chaos are accepted and filtered through my knowledge of painting and my need to create relationships.

The model and the figure: In the days of Bay Area Figurative Painting, abstract artists as well as representational painters drew regularly from the model. The not-so-simple act of placing the physical and psychological complexity of a human being in a believable space has been a great way of accomplishing something in a limited time period, and a way to keep my skills honed. Human gestures, as well as the gesture of the whole painting configuration, play a crucial role in my search for expression.

Feel free to contact me at james@jamesburpee.com.