James Brown (1951, Los Angeles, California) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Immaculate Heart College, Hollywood Los Angeles. He left for Paris, where he attended the École Supérieure des Beaux Arts. On his tours around Italy he admired Renaissance and especially Medieval Italian painting. During the 1980s, his paintings showed modernist and tribal art tendencies. In the early 1980s, influenced by Bad Painting and young Neo-Expressionism of the East Village painters, he began exhibiting in New York, and in this decade his work became celebrated in galleries and art press. On 12 September 1987 he married Alexandra Condon. In European galleries his work was seen in the context of a post-war European modernism in the tradition of Jean Dubuffet. In 1995 he moved to the valley of Oaxaca (Mexico) with his family, where they lived in a hacienda for nine years. During that time he and his wife collaborated with various artists, making rugs in a village in the mountains of Oaxaca. James and Alexandra also started Carpe Diem Press to make books with artists. In 2004, they moved to the city of Mérida, in the Yucatán. James Brown has been spending much time in Europe, exhibiting his work in France, Germany, Italy and Holland. Browns paintings are non-realistic but contain depictions or signs of recognizable faces or objects. More recently he has been working more in an abstract way. Besides paintings Brown has also produced sculptures, series of prints, and collages. Brown has exhibited in many galleries in the United States, Mexico and Europe.
