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David James' BiographyWhere cotton, cattle and sheep are the source of what income there is. Here, few have the luxury of oil play. Here if you are lucky enough to see a neighbor the first thing they will ask, "did it rain", and mostly the response is "no, it never did". My father came from poor, came across from Arkansas, a small town called Baldknob with his father on a wagon drawn by two mules. He had only a sixth grade education. He spent his whole life trying to be better than where he had come and before he died he couldn't figure what it was all about. He called himself a cattle and sheep trader, he was a purchaser of small plots of land, and on a daily basis gambling was his fun. He was good at it. My mother was tall, handsome, thin and nervous. She, my brother and I stayed out alone in the harshness of no where. My brother and I were more or less raised by a wetback named El Decio. My father was always off trading, doing what he did from a distance so his and our world seldom mixed. Water and Mercury. My mother was more gentle, she showed me art, she was a self taught painter, she played the piano, sometimes she played classical music. I am a self taught painter and come to think about it, just about a self-taught everything. I have no formal education. My real education is just plan reading, authors like D.H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, Nabokov, Naguib Makfouz, Jiddu Krishnamerti, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Joseph Cambell, Carl Jung. I have read the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the teachings of Buddha, studied Confusesism, read and reread the points of the Tao, know a little about Zen. Got to see the Dalai Lama, heard him mostly talk about loving to ride his bicycle. As for direction, No matter what I did, I saw quite early on painting was the only thing that brought me back to peace. I have been painting now for thirty-five years. Even though I have been fortunate to travel much of Western, Easten Europe, North America, some of Central and South America, parts of the Caribbean, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Hawaii, my biggest journey started under a single tree in a remote area on the edge of downtown Houston. For three months I sat for hours every day just trying to figure what my life was about, then finally I moved on. I had put together a body of work, was somewhat accepted in Santa Fe, lived there for more than two years. Saw first hand the politics of art wasn't much different from business or anything else. Spent two years in Hydra Greece, traveled and saw the bordering countries. Got what I wanted and moved on. Found a place outside Siena Italy, a good place for me to be. Later, Ukraine became my destination, a wonderful place to reevaluate what is real, one of the best places to learn "We in the west are spoiled rotten, don't have a clue about a lot of things we once knew". I saw people who lived much different from any I had ever seen before. Traveled to Russia, Hungary, Poland, Belarus. Met my wife while in Ukraine. We have been together for three years now, she is 23 and I am 57. We moved on to Mexico, traveled around and finally settled in the state of Chiapas on the border of Guatemala, in the mountains where it was mostly cool. We crossed borders quite frequently, know both sides quite well. Saw some really wonderful ruins. Now we are in San Francisco and when we go to the countryside, it is exceptional. The people too. The town itself has a small town feel with all the amenities we could ever hope for. In my travels I go where I know absolutely no one, not much about the country, the terrain, can't even speak the language. It is like opening your front door on a blistering cold morning where a blast of icy wind takes your breath away, it almost pushes you back into the warmth of what you do know. But somehow you manage to step out, and as you make those first hard steps further and further away from home, the wind dies down and you walk a little easier. The birds start to sing and there comes a time when you truly appreciate life and because of this effort you are making you are more alive than ever. The work I do is for me now. I see things in nature that I try to bring out through my dreams. I witness human endeavors. I write my story through paint and concept. Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Kandinsky, Matisse, Picasso, Rousseau, Klee, Chagall and Lucian Freud, their work inspires me. Sometimes I get ideas from conversations, sometimes it's just the peace I get from being somewhere new. The things I read have got to be a big part of my thinking and I try to choose my books as best I can. For me this is peace and I am happy. - David James |
