PRINTING FROM HERE

TERRELL JAMES

PAINTING FROM HERE

Cameron M Armstrong



TERRELL JAMES

PAINTING FROM HERE



TERRELL JAMES

PAINTING FROM HERE

Cameron M Armstrong
Foreword by Surpik Angelini

F. K. H A M I L T O N S. A.

2021

Copyright 2021, all rights reserved
Inquiries to: [email protected]

CONTENTS

A U T H O R‘ S P R E F A C E.............................1
F O R E W O R D : W H A T I F ? ....................3
R E N E W E D F O C U S ...................................6
D R A W I N G – P A I N T I N G .......................15
F I E L D S T U D Y ...........................................21
F A M I L Y ..........................................................31
P L A T E S ...........................................................35
A F T E R W O R D..............................................55



A U T H O R‘ S P R E F A C E from the particulars of its facture – seemed to echo its origins, and
offer productive insights. Meanwhile, her audience has continued to
Terrell James: Painting From Here began as a modest booklet writ- report new perspectives, differing interpretations, and alternative
ten to accompany and introduce one part of the artist’s practice, her ways of engaging with the work. They are all paths by which view-
drawings. A second followed, about the paintings, and then a third. ers can climb through the “fourth wall,” left temptingly open by
Nearing the end of work on that third booklet, regarding the Field James.
Studies series, I recognized that these brief writings could be
brought together into a more comprehensive publication. Therefore, I would like to extend a special thanks to Surpik Angelini for her
with the completion of a fourth short essay (on the sculpture) I be- many insights and long interest in the artist. Her foreword to this
gan the process of shepherding them into book form. volume, What If?, places James’ contribution in context with major
strands of thought, artistic and philosophical, and eloquently cap-
The concept’s limitations ruled out an exhaustive account of the art- tures the paradoxical synthesis of “methodic consistency” and intui-
ist’s themes, roots and interests, much less of the art itself. However, tive gesture in her practice.
the writing’s assembly from disparate, smaller texts came to support
multiple, suggestive views on the basic questions that had first in- Cameron Armstrong
spired the project – how to navigate encounters with James’ work, Houston, 2021
and how to relate it to one’s own imaginings. My approaches to
those questions were initially somewhat methodical, but became
closely aligned with the works at hand. Sometimes they seemed
even to echo the artist’s own processes. Thinking about the creation
of her work from so many things – from images, references, and

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FOREWORD: WHAT IF? Having developed her work from the seventies on, Terrell James be-
longs to a Postmodern generation of artists. Her work, however,
Surpik Angelini maintains a dialogue with masters as diverse as Abstract Expression-
ist Modernists such as Arshile Gorky and William DeKooning, or-
Reflecting on the broad spectrum of Terrell James’s paintings, one ganic conceptual artists such as Joseph Beuys, and even late Expres-
notes that at different points in her artistic career the artist has pur- sionists like Julian Schnabel. It is a fact that Modernist and Post-
sued questions that thrust her far into uncharted territory, generating modernist traits coexist in Terrell James’ work. One can say that her
new constellations of pictorial language. Each piece in a given pe- handling of “balanced compositions” seems in tandem with modern-
riod of the artist’s work is formulated like a pictorial essay, with nu- ist principles, while her liberated adoption of a visual vocabulary
ances and variations pertinent to the propositions she takes up. that breaks with “styles” is a Postmodern attitude. In fact, her work
bridges both modes rather successfully.
Exploring potentially new visual language is akin to creative think-
ing in philosophy, which, according to Gilles Deleuze, “brings into The abstract genre of Terrell James’s paintings is based on a distilla-
being that which does not yet exist” adding, “there is no other work, tion of organic processes and subliminal experiences grounded in
all the rest is arbitrary, mere decoration”. In fact, Deleuze stresses nature. Though her creative process seems intimately linked to or-
that, “to think is to create- there is no other creation”. Similarly, in ganic form and function, in art historical terms, James’s abstract
her visual essays, James immerses herself in a world of purely ab- paintings share more with musical composition and Kandinsky’s art
stract elements: color, line and their infinite permutations, which are than with the nature-based abstractions of artists like Mondrian and
edited in a wide range of proposals, from the early white on white Klee.
compositions to the saturated color fields of the last ten years.

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Taking Deleuze’s notion of pure becoming as a framework to ana- from the relative friction between juxtaposed concentrations of
lyze James’s artistic process, one could sustain that the artist seems color, or they emanate from the play of blinding light and subtle
to create from a state of mind where she can trace pure perception in shadows. Thus, space in James’ work is no longer quantifiable emp-
the present. In her being present, as Deleuze would see it, James acts tiness, but the residue of organic exchange between essences. It is as
“outside herself” from, what the philosopher calls the ‘In-Between’ atmospheric as breath exhaled from an exchange of relative color
space of becoming: a pre-semiotic space, a space/time preceding any tones.
signifying sign, something resembling the potential space psycholo-
gist Winnicott was known to observe in childhood’s early develop- Similarly, the element of line in James’s painting is also organic. It
mental stages before they learn to articulate language. In this space, seems to flow automatically from the subconscious, a phenomenon
perception is instinctive, intuitive, almost primal. James’ visual lan- explored by surrealist painter Andre Masson in the early Twentieth
guage, being purely sensorial and phenomenological is grounded in century. James’ lines evoke natural emanations, yet at times they
formless potential space. Thus, the artist’s paintings could be said to may be reduced to purely abstract gestures. Thus, in some instances
coagulate, dissolve, transmute essences experienced as primal per- they can bring to mind the essence of minerals (fissures, cracks,
ceptions. These essences, identified from Aristotle to the Native break lines), the nature of liquids (ripples, waves, drips), or the or-
American Indian, underlie known natural elements such as water, ganic growth in plants, movement in animals, insects. In fact,
air, fire, earth. Beyond James’ oeuvre’s formal coherence, we will though the artist herself speaks often of her inspiration based on ele-
find that each painting, with its own discourse, seems to delve ments in the landscape and living organisms, her gestural drawings
deeply with a particular natural essence: liquid, atmospheric, earthly. are rarely representational. Instead, they are highly evocative. In her
manner of making references, James never appeals to concrete
Like alchemical processes, colors and lines in the artist’s work memory. Quite the opposite, she records the traces of real experi-
maintain a fluid relation with one another, never quite crystallizing ences through a subjective path that leads to deep intuition, an
into measurable, identifiable forms. Spatial atmospheres are exuded

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intuition that deals directly with the unknown. At every instance in In grappling nuances, the work engages transformative energy,
her creative process she seems to ask, “What if?” which, in the end, renders a highly individuated form. In fact, Terrell
James’ work embodies the very process of becoming. Thus, while
About intuition, Deleuze writes, “Bergson saw intuition not as an she records spontaneous gestures of the hand or body combined with
appeal to the ineffable, a participation in a feeling or a lived identifi- the subtle layering of colored surfaces, we can find the visible traces
cation, but as a true method. This method sets out, firstly, to deter- of transformation in her thoughtfully layered, weighed, edited deci-
mine the conditions of problems, that is to say, to expose false prob- sions as she asks, “What if?” This sensitive balancing of pondered
lems or wrongly posed questions, and to discover the variables un- and deliberate acts with expressive gestures confirms Terrell
der which a given problem must be stated as such.” This idea of James’s acrobatic poetics in that creative space heralded in recent
probing “true or false” questions is also key to reading James’ crea- years as the ‘In-Between’: a charged, fluid, liberating place to be
tive process. and ultimately to become what is meant to be.

Within her own established parameters, James proceeds to play with Surpik Angelini
methodic consistency. Thus, since there is a method in her intuitive Houston, 2019
approach, one feels that the artist grapples with true or falsely stated
problems, refining, purifying them in the process. This intimate de-
liberation is something of which the viewer is only granted only a
partial view, as James ponders the “right solution” for each problem.
Detecting true from false reveals a highly trained mind, yet it does
not mean that the artist seeks to follow an academic model: James’s
painting is not academic, since the propositions underlying it chal-
lenge the very idea of existing canons.

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Figure 1: Sotol View (detail), 2007, oil and acrylic on canvas, 84" x 252"

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RENEWED FOCUS

I am interested in the viewer's participation in my work. There is the
work, then there is something that happens between the viewer and
the painting: a sort of second painting.

Terrell James

Responding to interest in a particular painting, Terrell James’ studio
often sends out digital images as background information: pictures
of the work overall, plus selected close-ups. For the viewer, the nat-
ural impulse might be to focus on the overall views. However, the

Figure 2: Tidal Threshold (detail), 2010, oil and acrylic on canvas, 63.5" x 213" fragmentary views not only clarify details, but can open windows
onto the artist’s creative process. Hinting at her visionary practice,
they suggest a parallel process through which viewers might move
beyond spectatorship.

The physical and psychological security of James’ workspace under-
writes an artmaking process marked by constant changes in attention
and focus. The mental turns it sponsors, from objects to ideas, fore-
grounds to backgrounds, action to reflection, and from new images

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to old, epitomize the reflexive engagements realized – and memori- but in helping conjure the true scale of James’ subject, they engineer
alized – in viewers’ experience. They’re supported by the solidity of an intimacy with the work’s sources in natural geography. One such
the studio’s architecture, its siting amidst an ex-
tensive greenspace and, most importantly, by story begins with images of watery, foaming
the intellectual lures of her library and the at- terraces cantilevering forward and down toward
tractions of her caches of bones, fossils, mete- the picture plane, from left and right. They sug-
orites, and more. They constitute an extensive gest surging, beach-crashing waves as, in the
repository of evocative objects, collected for painting, they play upon wiggling and jumping
the associations they recall and for their inher- sea creatures. Beyond and higher up, smudgy
ent character. It’s easy to imagine how images patches of sky – purple and green – portend a
might be summoned in this environment, the seaborne disturbance, perhaps even an ap-
breadth of their associations, and their potential proaching hurricane.
to direct (and redirect) the artist’s attention. As
storehouse, workshop and spiritual retreat, Certainly, this panorama may dominate the
James’ studio constitutes a domain where nar- viewer’s encounter, as the assured confidence
ratives of mind and art cross paths as easily as of James’ brushwork quells uncertainties and
foregrounds and backgrounds trade places. alternate readings. However, the gestural resi-
due of the work’s earlier stages, widely detecta-
The digital close-ups from James’s studio help ble, irrupt from within the picture often enough
demonstrate the far-reaching impacts that small features can have on to doom hopes of a settled interpretation. The
a picture’s construction. Tidal Threshold (2010, 63.5 x 213 inches), picture can change before one’s eyes, literally. Tidal Threshold
offers several such moments. They not only shape the composition,

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Figure 3: Tidal Threshold, 2010, oil and acrylic on canvas, 63.5" x 213" these bluffs, viewers may find earlier images - of scudding clouds
and rolling surf – dissolving into figures of stolid geology. What
demonstrates the productive instability generated through James’ se- was watery and soft is now hard, unyielding. No longer sketching
rial impaction of images, and its role in constructing the work. Re- violent, oncoming surf, the artist’s inky paints carve out fissures in
petitive cycles of visual projection – now directed here, now there – stony walls. “Tidal pools” and “sea creatures” dissipate. But even as
paradoxically sustain and stabilize its changing imagery, and en- the mind comes to rest in this story, another vision-within-a-vision
courage the imaginative calibration of one’s personal scale to that of may appear, bannered across the top. There, plumes of burnt smoke,
the subject’s actual magnitude. as if caught in strong winds, veer to (or from) some vaporous calam-
ity. Their billowing, scale-less shafts choreograph a glance-by-
Tidal Threshold does indeed have more than one story to tell, and glance rhythm that stitches together multiple layers of allusion.
through many of the very same figures. Stretching across the work
at mid-height, James models a belt of cliff-like reliefs to transcribe
the eroded escarpments flanking the Cape Fear River. Encountering

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From these moments, one could guess at an even grander narrative Threshold. Evoking tumbled boulders and scaleless cliffs, her trans-
of nautical uproar, rocky coasts and skyborne disaster. Created by lucent, loosely applied washes bring the deserts of West Texas’ sto-
viewers’ invention as much as through painterly gestures, such a ried Trans Pecos vividly to mind. The back-and-forth encounters
tableau might well deliver Tidal Threshold’s final account. Or, it James engineers between the picture’s suggestions and the viewer’s
might be only another point of transition in the work’s encounter, discoveries loosen our ingrained want for finality, and grant view-
coaxing the viewer yet further into its visionary embrace of the land- ers’ creativity an expansive scope. This choreography makes the
scape, in its totality. self-shaped geometry of vision, itself, a subject of the painting, pos-
sessing agency in both space and time. Thus, whether narrowly fo-
The arid landscape conjured by James in Sotol View (2007, 84 x 252 cused on one part of the canvas, scanning its breadth, or retrieving
inches) could not be more different from the fluid world of Tidal images from memory, the viewer is both ensnared in the elasticity of

Figure 4: Sotol View, 2007, oil and acrylic on canvas, 84" x 252"

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its composition, and an agent in its revision. chance, the reflexive engagement required to
Traced from memory onto the canvas, Sotol approach her works parallels how James herself
View’s impacted, fragmentary images of cliffs, resolves them. In any single encounter, vision
animals, creosote and the detritus of the desert travels from speculation, to analysis, and then
floor move its audience toward an analog of interpretation. Certainty about meanings or even
James’ site-rooted experience. Its colorful particular features remains captive both to the
washes in oil and acrylic, carved into relief by spontaneous emergence of new imagery and to
sinuous lines of oil stick, reinforce the almost figures upwelling through memory from the
hallucinogenic effects of these projections. work’s beginnings.
Through the artist’s fugitive imagery – of giant
horses, distant cliffs and drought-beset arroyos Figure 5: Mountain (progress 1), 2017, oil on canvas In James’ 2017 work, Mountain, ghosts of her
– they re-scale the picture to match James’ Figure 6: Mountain (progress 2), 2017, oil on canvas initial washes persist well into the picture’s late
original encounter with the desert. stages (as do many fragments of early figures).
Its early stages witnessed James’ development
James begins large paintings with expansive, of several light-filled, diaphanous scrims, at
often translucent washes of paint, arrayed in center and to left, indicating a brooding, hard-
overlapping blocks and stains. They serve to chiseled head, partly turned. Successive photo-
bracket the emotions accessible to viewers, as graphs illustrate how, iteration by iteration,
well as the work’s overall expression. Their these fragments’ growing clarity was countered
population with figures inspired by memory by the even bolder modeling of surrounding
and ready-at-hand materials marks a critical shapes. Yet, evolving from delicate translu-
first stage in pictures’ development. Not by cence into a chiseled, opaque block, the figure

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occluded – becomes powerfully evocative. The still recognizable
forms underlying this “eye” epitomize the paradox of an ephemeral,
evolving palimpsest, literally looking out through the artist’s later
brushwork.

Figure 7: Mountain, 2017, oil on canvas, 66" x 66" This episodic style is common among James’ paintings, lending
structure to her layering of images and pictorial structures. Their ir-
kept pace with its neighbors. Fragments of early, subtle washes re- ruption from within the work recalls the stratigraphy of Earth’s
main, to be energized by later developments. Elsewhere (at upper crust. As when molten stone pulses upwards through younger strata,
left), a concave shell, shaped like an eye socket, marks the end point so also do James’ images rise from basal stirrings. Similar to scien-
of a similar evolution. Although only partly discernable in either the tists mapping such structures, James’ viewers may at first only par-
early or late phases of the work, its later modeling – though still tially register their forms. Unlike in geology, these fragmentary out-
crops may convey more information than can fully exposed for-
mations. This effect is reminiscent of the visceral impacts of ancient
“bone beds,” where limited quarrying often reveals lost creatures
more vividly than full
excavation. Such par-
tially disclosed fossils
can inspire imaginative,
penetrating gazes into
their native rock by
those trying to grasp

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their full extents. Recovered from sites heavy with suffering, their interrogation and discovery, far removed from linear narrative. Their
fateful archives are better grasped by the imagination than through vortical movement generates forceful upwellings of meaning. Tidal
dry reconstructions. This projection of these myriad ancient trage- Threshold, Sotol View and Mountain exemplify how her pictures can
dies into our present awareness offers intriguing parallels to the ir- seem literally to boil with this energy, drawing viewers to the canvas
ruption of James’ early gestures in the later stages of her paintings – time and again in search of a final vision.
and to the emergence of new meanings in viewers’ experience of
them. Arising from possibilities already implicit in the paintings and
in the minds of their audience, as if lodged in a figurative bone bed,
these revelations reflect the mutuality of the encounters sponsored
by James. As remarked by Stephanie Buhmann, “If one thinks of
James' work as an expression of her internalized experience of
something concrete, which is meant to be completed through the
projection of something private and internal by each viewer, it can
be described as a bridge between the inner landscapes of both artist
and audience.”1

As images proliferate, James’ viewers can find their habits of under- Figure 8: Between Twins, 2018, oil on canvas, 42" x 42"
standing transformed. Their eyes become authors as well as recipi-
ents of information. Memory expands from recording experience to
sponsoring its invention. And a work’s completion isn’t delivered on
the canvas, but is produced later, in imagination. These visionary
impulses lead encounters with James’ works into looping cycles of

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Figure 9: Displacements, 2019, mixed media on stone paper, 28" x 40"

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DRAWING–PAINTING her audience into the making of the work, as if it’s only one more of
PAINTING–DRAWING her technical media, and equivalent to ink, wash, pen and brush. Her
alternating jagged, staccato and looping marks chart visual geogra-
Terrell James’ decades-long study of the mutable and allusive in phies that range from the recognizable to the inchoate. In an instant,
perception, and of memory’s persistence in restructuring it, has lent viewers’ attention may move from depictive marks suggesting hard-
her practice a visionary aspect. Spending time with her pictures, chiseled hillsides or a boulder-strewn beach, for example, to vague
viewers can find immediate perceptions braided together with the clouds of translucent washes. Viewers weave personal paths through
mental traces of their earlier encounters. The artist’s layering of new these elements, later to be complicated by additional readings. The
images over old creates dreamlike stratigraphies of form and emo- viewer’s agency in creating this work – joining with James in mak-
tion. The fragmentary figures lodged within them may resurface ing (and remaking) experience – is fundamental to the imaginative
later as observers’ experience deepens. As a result, a painting’s nar- openness of James’ practice.
ratives can remain interpretable and undecided for as long as the im-
ages persist on the canvas, or in the mind. The stone paper Threads 5, points in a similar direction. A first take
might focus on the supine, tan-hued body floating up into the center
Witnessing James’ approach unfold in another practice can clarify of the picture. It’s doll-like, with subtle putty-gray shadows falling
this process. For example, in 2019 James completed a number of upon the chalky ground beneath and behind it. That chalky expanse
drawings of her ongoing Stone paper series, rendered on hard, – recalling images of a bull ring’s floor – extends from the picture’s
smooth-surfaced sheets of compressed marble dust. Works like Dis- bottom to a sand-textured band brushed across the top; it has the ef-
placements, Thunder and Merwin’s Thoroughfare illustrate how fect of a wave breaking there. Separately, the grey-green figure
James’ method of drawing incorporates the imaginative capacity of

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Figure 10: Threads 5, 2019, mixed media on stone paper, 28" x 20" sprawling near the bottom – is it wearing goggles?! – suggests a car-
toon figure, perhaps tugging at an outsized, human-shaped balloon
rising above. Alternately, it might suggest a muscle-bound athlete
striding forward across a sandy infield. Perhaps. Any reading of
Threads 5 is uncertain: James deploys her mastery of intuitive sug-
gestion not to deliver stable readings but instead to pose riddles for
the viewer to resolve.

The painted canvases for which James is most known parallel the
strategies of these stone paper drawings, and sometimes at enormous
scale (up to 20 feet wide). But painted works of lesser size can effi-
ciently epitomize them. 2017’s Retinue shares the instability of the
stone paper, with the added complication that here her pen and brush
trade places: lines are enlisted to shape painterly modeling, while
her brush often plays the draughtsman. In effect, her twisting lines
rise up repeatedly from within forms or thread across (and through)
them in a kind of stitching, as if the artist is sewing images together.
For the viewer, they’re like mental hand-holds into her vision, as
when a climber traverses steep cliffs. Retinue shows how a “draw-
ing-painting” constructs meaning, as lines determine forms and
frame visual history. In comparison, Moore’s (elephant) skulls, Ma-
tisse’s backs and Guston’s cartoons come to mind.

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Figure 11: Retinue, 2017, oil on canvas, 78" x 105"

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For many, the multiple torsos of Retinue’s central frieze decide its habits of attachment – grasping of any and all kinds. They’ve pur-
story simply by way of their powerful march into its foreground. sued this release through a highly disciplined, meditative practice of
However, viewers’ eyes may be moved in other directions, such as refusal, likened to the grinding of a hard plaque to make a polished,
toward the clouds of luscious colors billowing everywhere across purified “bright mirror of the mind” that can show things “as it is.”
the composition – rose, pink, red and blue. And “architecture” may This is not so different from the perceptual circularity of James’
also intervene, as they feel spurred across span after span of bridge- works. After following her images through turn-after-turn of revi-
like arches toward visions of boulders and other images, at contra- sion, viewers can feel an erosion in their power to preconceive their
dictory scales – even of a jumping dog, or a monstrous jaw, an arm forms and meanings. This is a preparation for new, purified vision,
with grasping hand, or a distortedly caricatured head. Seeking im- where color is seen simply as color, and line is seen simply as line:
ages despite the artist’s indirection, the viewer may become frus- the view in the bright mirror. Analogously, Phenomenologists in-
trated. But though pulling in different directions, Retinue is not a cluding Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty pursued their
scene of chaos. Rather, it’s a carefully composed setting for James’ idea of the “thing-in-itself” by rigorous intellection. Husserl is cred-
(and her viewers’) interrogation of illusions and projections. Her ex- ited with a theoretical path to suspending judgement, and a doctrine
cursions into the formless anchor the picture beyond conventional for grasping what lies beyond human projections. Merleau-Ponty’s
formulations, among the unexpected things yet to be uncovered. ruminations disclosed the fallacies of “objective” perception, instead
grounding vision in its own gestures. In both traditions, East and
With the mind its venue, James’s work joins in dialogue with tradi- West, true reality is to be found through interrogating the mind’s
tions outside of art. Her offer of escape from mental rigidity, and constructions, rather than by accepting its preconceptions. James,
from impulses to judge, recalls aspects of philosophies East and too, suggests that experience is a creature of the self. Her raveled
West. For instance, there are parallels to western Phenomenology, and unraveling lines, her clouds, cliffs, and mirages, and her irresist-
and to certain strains of Buddhism. For a millenium, students of ibly sensual colors are a vehicle of transformative power, carrying
Zen’s preeminent lineages have sought freedom from the destructive the eyes to where they can see truly, and anew.

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Figure 12: Merwin’s Thoroughfare, 2019, paint and ink on stone paper, 29” x 20” Figure 13: Thunder, 2019, paint and ink on stone paper, 29” x 20”

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FIELD STUDY and often of inner radiance. At a remove of several feet, the studies’
stratified imagery can produce the effect of figures issuing from be-
Over a span of several decades, the series of small works devoted by hind their painted surfaces. When viewing several studies at once,
Terrell James to the plein air genre of field study recast its corner of observers may find meanings seeming to merge, as their respective
landscape painting into the venue for a master class on color’s in- after-images build up and layer over each other. With a large instal-
vention and interpretation. The artist’s interest in paint’s tactile qual- lation, viewers can experience colors and images spilling out virtu-
ities and the expressive range of her gestures imbue these works ally, beyond their frames, into synthetic mental formations that are
with both a fine-grained specificity, and a potential for scaleless independent of their origins in particular paintings.
monumentality. Their incarnation of James’ immersive process, and
the intensity of their emergent hues and narratives can inspire strong James’ Field Studies commenced during 1996, when certain of her
emotions. Similar to suites of etchings or lithographs, relations used, paint-smeared paper palettes – too arresting to be casually dis-
within the series shape encounters with any particular work. Indeed, carded – began accumulating in her workspace. Traditionally, artists
each one offers both a singular encounter and a portal to understand- have discarded palettes after their use in mixing and matching pig-
ing the series as a whole. Both are complicated by the sheer scale of ments for particular completed works. However, the compelling col-
the Field Studies: almost eight hundred have been completed to date. ors of these particular vellums led to their preservation among
James’ other works. Surveying their pages strewn across tables and
At this writing, the Field Studies number 757 discrete works. Distin- on the floor, she came to view them as more than merely technical
guished by simple vellum supports, either 16 x 12 or 20 x 16, and resources. They also suggested solutions to a vexing problem. At the
mounted against white museum board, each is secured in a simple time the palettes’ visual authority became apparent, James’ work
light blonde wooden frame, behind glass. In this setting their waxy could often involve superposing twenty or more thin films of oil
vellum is expressive rather than dull, fostering pellucid effects such upon a support – complicatedly translucent, viscous and slow to sta-
as – at close range – of pigments floating forward toward the viewer, bilize. Completion of a painting might be delayed for months as she

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waited for its materials to cure. Now, her palettes suggested a new prelude. Turning away from the idealism of classical themes, artists
format altogether, and the possibility of both a more spontaneous of the late 18th century embraced the concept of immediate experi-
practice and a more efficient technique. ence. The “plein air” studies of Camille Corot (1796-1875) and the
Barbizon School (Rousseau, Daubigny, Dupré et al., 1830-1870) il-
The resulting series was named for the palettes, sketches and plein lustrate field study’s evolution from palette-based sampling, to the
air compositions through which landscape painters traditionally have specificity of intensively sketched mementoes.
sought accuracy for their pictures. Under the rubric of “field study”
they attempted to transfer, with precision, the colors and atmos- The artists’ focus on matching attributes to realities paralleled the
pheric qualities of their subjects to ongoing works in the studio. growing interest in grounding knowledge in fact among many 18th
Though little pursued before Poussin (1594-1665), the practice be- and 19th century thinkers. Seeking true fidelity to nature, they in-
came important to some later 17th century painters. For instance, vented experimental science, quantitative research and new theories
Claude Lorrain (1604-1682) was known to haunt his landscape sub- of sense perception, including via emerging arts like photography.
jects, incessantly mixing and remixing pigments. Like later artists, For successors of Humboldt and Darwin, as for artists after Corot,
Claude was drawn to research in the field by concerns that his col- the potential for perception and reality to diverge, and the re-ground-
ors’ might diverge from his subjects, leading to fatal distortions in ing of experience needed to ward off or heal such ruptures became
his depiction of their experience and of the emotions arising from it. critical matters. This drama is the historical focus of field study.
Therefore, he attempted “by every means to penetrate nature, lying James’ merger of palette-making with her expansive painterly prac-
in the fields before the break of day and until night in order to learn tice, critically concerned with fidelity to natural fact and authentic
to represent very exactly the red morning sky, sunrise and sunset emotion, thus found a natural home in the genre. After almost 800
and the evening hours.”2 Historically, such study eventually ex- works James has remained true to field study even as, in her hands,
panded beyond palette-based efforts to encompass colored drawings, it’s been transformed into an arena for painterly performance.
created in tandem with large scale paintings rather than as their

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James’ Field Studies evolved from works that look like palettes, to

works that tell stories, to works of light and color, in the process de-

veloping a grammar supportive both of her inward focus on expres-

sion, and outward turn toward experience. Although barely one re-

move from the disposable, paint-smeared pages that inspired them,

early studies such as FS3 (1997) foreshadow much about the series.

Through its swirling counterpoint of emergent figures and dramatic

clouds of pigment – for instance, a hulking goat-beast (with bloody

prey) at center, posed against ambiguous masses of paint beyond –

FS3 generates stark shifts in narrative. No sooner does one image

form than its absorption into one or another alternative figure be-

gins. The painting’s notional scale turns on whether viewers inter-

pret a particular mark or a smudge

to be, for instance, part of a

sheep’s head, a dove’s wing, or

some other mutating form. With Figure 15: Field Study 3, 1997, mixed media on vellum, 16" x 12"

hindsight, observers may con- likewise presents a Rorschach-style smattering of quickly rendered
shapes, in ambiguous conjunctions. Its figuration is as over-scaled as
clude that their participation in the FS3’s is small. Projecting several varieties of depiction, its alterna-
tions circle around visions of a spider-like creature, possibly in
growth, absorption and decay of throes of reproduction, whose ordeal unfolds in tandem with the pro-
gress of the viewer’s engagement.
such imagery is the work’s actual

Figure 14: Field Study 3, 1997, content, regardless of any sus-
mixed media on vellum, 16" x 12" pected depictions. FS4 (1997)

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Figure 16: Field Study 15, 1998, mixed media on vellum, 16" x 12" FS15 and FS19 (both 1998) demonstrate James’ interest in the
mind’s capacity for reviving forms in new contexts, after their origi-
nal references have dissolved. Ransacking layers of paint, viewers
find new meanings latent in her trademark swirls, streaks and
smudges, now delivered from the periphery to the center of aware-
ness. In FS15, a creature of wings and snoods dominates attention
until, at mid stalk or strut, it flares bird-like before the dark form of
a horse, a stallion, which seems to stomp and prance into the fore-
ground. The visual weight of this animal turns the page both inward,
and out, as one foreground seems literally to be pulled forward
through the other. However, instead of reinforcing the implicit solid-
ity of images, this transformation emphasizes the evocative power of
James’ dreamworlds. The story of viewers’ participation in the
painting becomes its true meaning. FS19 is similarly devoted to
James’ involuted, hide-and-seek dramas of gesture and form. First,
she suggests a man’s rotund, unshaven face, and then counters it
with an overlapping, feathery bird’s head. Other possible or poten-
tial figures also vie for attention, such as the image of a starch-col-
lared 19th century business man, and more. This study demonstrates
how James not only appropriates the mind’s structure, but adapts the

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cardinal axes of composition – of centered/decentered or center/pe-
riphery, symmetrical/asymmetrical, foreground/background – to her
purposes. FS15 and FS19 together show how merging palette and
painting has enabled her to make the unfolding of her viewers’ per-
ceptions into a subject in her works, independent of the formal
meanings that might emerge within them.

FS35 and FS37 (2000) mark a
change in James’ ground, from

unfinished to prepared. Although

continuing to exploit the translu-

cent and non-absorptive qualities

of vellum, as the series matured

the artist was also drawn to the

use of traditional gesso substrates.

Her ground for FS35 reflects this

Figure 17: Field Study 35, 2003, transition, with some areas ges-
mixed media on vellum, 16” x 12” soed and others left as untreated

vellum. At first glance, the choreography the viewer’s encounter

with it seems to accord with earlier studies: images enter awareness
at the pace of viewers’ capacity to recognize them, and then are

Figure 18: Field Study 19, 1998, mixed media on vellum, 16" x 12"

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Figure 20: Field Study 37, 2000, mixed media on vellum, 16” x 12” gradually transformed. Bright colors and delicate modeling at the
top of the page suggest reef-dwelling fish. Their rhythmic brush-
work offers a soothing counterpoint to the jumbled chaos unfolding
below, where figures’ suggesting both (or either) microscopic and
geologic scales deliver formal agency to the process of their ap-
praisal. Similarly, FS37’s snowy, translucent brushwork sweeps for-
ward in subtle, textured layers to order relations between ground and
foreground, depth and surface, and center and periphery. Wrapping
around and partly obscuring delicate, vortical clouds of rust, blue
and pink, these scrims both unite and subdivide the composition.
Once again, the viewer’s encounter is propelled into a role as pro-
tagonist in the work’s formation.

FS120 and FS130 (2003) tiptoe be-
tween forms to be recognized and
forms to be interpreted. Instead of
relying on figuration and brush-
work to convey narrative, they in-
vite viewers to construct their own
stories. Viewers of FS120 are
likely first attracted by the forceful

Figure 19: Field Study 130, 2003,

sketching and bold smears appearing mixed media on vellum, 16” x 12”

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on the page at lower right. Moving diagonally up and left on a
brushstroke-by-brushstroke ladder of colors, their attention rises to
the center of the page. Turning further up, and to the right, they en-
counter the stolid, smudged shapes positioned by James to serve as
an anchor for the composition overall. These movements aren’t only
a journey through figures and images, and not simply a tour of
paint’s emotional temperatures, textures and contrasts. They record
how the agency afforded by James to her observers – in effect, her
partnership with them – enables rhythms of glance-by-glance,
viewer-directed encounters. FS130 choreographs a similar rhythm of
gesture and perception, but at a different temperature. Entering at
bottom via swirling smudges of green, midnight blue and lavender,
the eyes climb upward in company with effervescent blooms of
peach, yellow and blue. There are probably no better referents for
these impressions than a hypothetical bouquet of flowers, or a rising
bundle of balloons.

While neither FS120 nor FS130 began as an actual palette, through Figure 21: Field Study 120, 2003, mixed media on vellum, 16” x12”
swirling paint and palpable facture they each pointedly refer to one.
This telescoping of the mental distance from intrinsic suggestion
(such as of flowers, arising directly out of brushwork) to the syntax
of extrinsic reference (in signifying working palettes) stages a back-

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and-forth exchange of semiotic energy between opposed systems of no genre other than field study is as focused on the painter’s improv-
meaning. Viewers can feel as if they’re looking through both ends isation of hue and form, and questions about fidelity to sensation,
of a telescope, at once. The palpable tensions produced in the articu- nor so dedicated to painting’s fundamental operations: mixing,
lation of these opposites both anchor the work to immediate experi- blending, smearing, scraping, adding/subtracting, covering/expos-
ence, and propel the viewer to associations that extend beyond field ing, combining, thinning, and brushing. Returning them to the heart
study altogether. Ultimately, FS120 and FS130 memorialize the al- of painterly practice, James poses the question of when the artist’s
tered condition of field study in James’ hands, transformed from gesture actually begins, and invites its re-grounding in the disci-
functional tool to the condition of art. pline’s fundamental labors.

Since her first experiments with palette-like vellums, James’ Field This view would not have unsettled Claude or Corot, since their in-
Studies have put hundreds of original propositions before the tensive approach to reality hinged on the same activities pursued by
viewer. The series evolved from works that look like palettes, to James. The closely monitored continuum from immediate impres-
works that tell stories, to works of pure light and color. In the pro- sion, to verified palette, to summary sketch, to the work of art was,
cess, they developed a grammar capable of supporting both James’ for them, like a chain of custody for perceptual truth – from nature
inward focus on expression, and her outward turn toward experi- to artist to audience. Similarly for James, field study’s research into
ence. Just as, years ago, the emerging series had found a home based vision’s first, best and truest impressions is tightly knotted to view-
on its affinity to the interests that define field study, so too did those ers’ participation in cycles of sensation, questioning, and revision.
concerns eventually become instrumental in shaping the series’ tri- So close an embrace of experience, harnessed to the mind’s talents
angulation of artist, art object and subject. In her hands, the interests for comparison and invention, has been the mechanism and the
of field study and of painting have become intimately conjoined, not meaning of field study from its beginning.
only because of their shared origins in materials and the imagination
but, critically, as a pairing of like practices and like theories. Indeed,

28

Figure 22: Field Study 751, 2020, mixed media on vellum, 16” x 12” Figure 23: Field Study 725, 2018, mixed media on vellum, 20” x 16”

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Figure 24: Family 2, 1996, cast bronze with patina, 5” x 2” x 3”

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FAMILY Family began with small chunks of foundry wax, wire-cut in succes-
sive pieces from larger blocks. As the themes she found within them
Terrell James’ first sustained work in three dimensions was formally were slowly revealed through handling and manipulation, James’
born with the casting of 20 hand-sized bronze objects collectively mentally stored their tactile lessons for translation into the modeling
named Family in 1996, the year of her first oil-on-vellum Field of later elements. She returned repeatedly to the larger blocks to
Studies. The two series both reflect the artist’s interest in the origins calve new small pieces and then, warmed by sunlight or the hand,
of form and its changeable condition. But where understanding of they would manually be pulled, pressed and stretched. Sometimes
the Field Studies can change quickly with insight, awareness of ready-at-hand materials such as pine straw were pressed into the
Family evolves gradually, in the hand and by touch. Physical contact wax. As the parent block was slowly reduced, the resources afforded
generates connections between the observer, the artwork and the art- to later members also steadily diminished; they can seem physically
ist that are very different from those inspired in two dimensions. attenuated, reduced in heft.
Sensations and impressions, memories and recollections are felt,
recorded and recovered through different channels. Even with their As objects, Family members can weigh up to three pounds. Created
strong visual imagery, members of Family are best accessed in the by encasing each wax form within a clay armature, to be melted out
haptic language of their creation. Consistent with James’ two-di- and replaced with molten bronze (the “lost wax” method), they re-
mensional work, they’re tangibly marked by the gestures that flect the artist’s handwork exactly. Emerging from their casts with
formed them. These traces draw observers into direct contact with dull surfaces, they were then exposed to various chemicals and
the artist’s hand, as if touching it, even as their meanings continue to physical processes for the sake of the artist’s desired patina, includ-
evolve. ing dirt burial (in a site near James’ studio of those years). Together
with imprints of leaves and pine straw, these steps conferred on
Family an aura of earthly, vegetative existence, notwithstanding its
unyielding metal.

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Artist of the Year exhibition, Hover. Grasping patinaed bronzes as if
her fists held a grenade, a pear, or a living animal (or human heart),
James hinted at the intimacy possible even in one’s very first experi-
ences with Family. From the pictures, it’s easy to imagine these ob-
jects repeatedly rolling and tumbling in her hands, and being passed
from one hand to the other. From eyes to hand, wrist to arm, shoul-
der to hand, the haptic loop of Family braids together intellection,
the objects’ physical warmth, and the spatial investigation of the
hands’ grasp.

Figure 25: Family 2, 1996, cast bronze with patina, 5” x 2” x 3” Family 2: Neither large nor complicated – and perfectly sized for the
hand – the visual associations of this family member may initially
Approaching Family, the sheer physicality of grasping, lifting and seem obvious. At first glance, the object might suggest a burgeoning
then lowering these objects can create intense feelings of intimacy. seed pod, opening to sprout new life. Impressed marks of finger and
The objects’ qualities of heft, texture, and temperature – and even thumb confer a gnarly texture, and calibrate it to a particular, close-
their metallic scent – challenge any preconceptions by the observer. up scale of experience. Variations in its texture suggest both decay
Based on impulse or a feeling of recognition, the observer may first and vigorous growth, as of a seed unearthed in mid-germination.
reach for a member resembling a known object, like a heart or other However, even as this shell imparts a vegetative energy, the hand
organ, a bone, or a piece of fruit. The selection may also hinge on can sense a different, meaty aura – perhaps a ghostly shadow of an-
the observer’s haptic preferences, such as for a shape easily gripped, cient rituals.
or one light in weight. The artist herself indicated where to begin an
encounter with Family, in photographs from with her 2016 Texas

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Family 5: Of all Family members, 5 is among the most approacha-
ble purely through the eyes – but even more than the others, it de-
mands touching and weighing. Each of its limbs seems to have suf-
fered some forceful bending, and compaction. Because observers
first approach Family as a collection of bronze objects, rather than in
terms of their waxen legacy, such manipulation can seem super-hu-
man. But Family 5 was clearly formed at personal scale, in human-
sized motions of hand, wrist and fingers.

Figure 26: Family 5, 1996, cast bronze with patina, 6” x 5” x 5” Figure 27: Family 1 and 9, 1996, cast bronze with patina, 8.5” x 3.5” x 4”

Family 1 and 9 (together): Encountering Family as a group or subset
of its members poses questions beyond the scope of any single frag-
ment. The power of physical characteristics – such as heft, patina
and texture – and of the viewer’s personal associations is multiplied
by the objects’ interrelations. The viewer is drawn both to novel in-
terpretations, and also to configure new arrangements for the group-
ing – any new configuration becomes, in effect, another sculpture.
These two pieces, in particular, haptically suggest a thick, heavy
club, much impressed by finger tips and thumbs, and a smaller,
more delicate seed pod. Alternately, they might suggest primitive
tools or fossils, even while posing youth against maturity.

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Small, gnarled, intensively manipulated bronze castings seem a castings of her grasp-
strange arena for the legacy of 20th century automatism. But Family
ing, pressing, twist-
owes more to the automatic activities of figures like Andre Masson
and Eva Hesse than to academic sculpture. Its automatism – born of ing and stretching,
James’ spontaneous handwork and the physicality of her wax and Hesse’s skeins of
bronze – stages a similar merger of process and form: its process
string and resin con-
may actually be its form. Resemblances of certain members of Fam-
ily to Masson’s Figure of 1921 suggest shared origins. Draped geal the gesture-by

across the page as if a kind of netting, his lines (literally: Lignes gesture choreography
d’Attention) describe successive movements in his moment-by-mo-
ment concentration, as do the traces memorializing the artist’s of her body’s actions Figure 28: Untitled (Rope Piece), Eva Hesse, 1970,
kneading, pressing, and stretching of Family’s original wax. in reaching, pulling mixed media, Estate of Eva Hesse, Hauser & Wirth,
and suspending the Zurich and London

sculpture’s material. Likewise, Family’s castings are literal records

of James’ haptic and visual work. The slow process by which ob-

This resonance of Family with Mas- servers determine its final shape through their own handling, hold-
son’s Lignes d’Attention also invites
comparison with Eva Hesse’s spaces ing, looking, and thinking means that its encounter can long remain
of string and rope, such as No Title
(1969-1970). This work stages a vir- unsettled and interpretable. Understanding unfolds, but only at the
tual merger of volume and line,
which in James’ piece is realized measured pace at which hands and fingers explore the objects. As
through shared haptic experiences, as
well as abstractly. Similar to James’ with Masson and Hesse, comprehension requires that observers vir-
tually inhabit the work’s process of creation in a dream-like imagi-
nary of its material properties – including the bodily efforts of its
making, and its heft, physical scale, and texture – in effect reprising

Figure 29: Automatic Drawing, the gestures that gave it life.
Andre Masson, 1924, MoMA

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PLATES

35

Figure 30: Rouffignac 5, 2002, acrylic and oil on birch, 23” x 25”

36

Figure 31: Rouffignac 7, 2002, acrylic and oil on birch, 23” x 25” Figure 32: Rouffignac 10, 2002, acrylic and oil on birch, 23” x 25”

37

Figure 33: Shells on the Moon, 2008, oil on canvas, 66” x 66”

38

Figure 34: Signal, 2019, oil on linen, 29” x 63”

39

Figure 35: Liquid Alignment, 2019, oil on linen, 48” x 120”

40

Figure 37: Saboteur, 2018, oil on aluminum, 12” x 12”

Figure 36: Misfits, 2017, oil on canvas, 44” x 38”

41

Figure 38: Drawn from Family, 2019, oil and graphite on stone paper, 28” x 20”

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