Artist Information

James Shay

"My paintings are evocations of places in nature done with simple shapes, forms and strong color, representing something of the sensuality within our natural world."

I like a high level of abstraction in representational art, and I love color. Through their materiality, I want the paintings to have some memory of time. To achieve this, I scrape and sand their surfaces with razor blades and sandpaper. I paint with casein, a water-based medium which is probably the oldest painting medium in existence. It dries to a matte finish, which is similar to that of a fresco surface. Before a painting is finished it goes through many iterations within its painted layers. By scraping and sanding the surfaces during the painting process much visual richness is found, because the earlier layers are often resurrected, so that they become visible, either directly, or as shadows within the final work.

Before becoming a full-time painter, I practiced architecture for 26 years with work exhibited in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City. I was also elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. The background in architecture helped me to think of paintings as flat surfaces, somewhat like frescos in buildings.

Within the local art community I have served as president of the board of the nonprofit Marin Arts Council and participated in critiques at UC Berkeley, San Quentin prison, the California College of the Art and other settings.

All 10 artwork(s) by James Shay

Beginning	Flash	Flash Glance	In the Afternoon
Near Richard's	Open	Promise	Red Ochre Ridge
Spring	Valley Time