Dana James

Dana James (b. 1986) is a painter and New York native now residing in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She creates works with an exquisite sense of touch, incorporating multiple mediums and textures by the process of pouring and mark making. Her iridescent markings relate to scarring, but at the same time these flickering surfaces evoke the play of moonlight or the filament of a dragonfly’s wing, transient images that are symbols of change. James’s work explores beautiful, captivating dualities— transience and permanence, geometric and amorphous, dirty and clean, light and dark, the contradictions of femininity, and the dichotomies of human experience. She draws on wide ranging themes all the while referencing the great American tradition of Color Field Painting, creating a fresh language all her own.

Since graduating from the School of Visual Arts in 2008, James’s work has been exhibited extensively and can be found in multiple private and public collections in New York City and beyond. Recent solo and two person shows include Otherwise All Was Silent (Bode Projects, Berlin, 2020); The Thread, Dana James and Lizbeth Mitty (David & Schweitzer Contemporary, Brooklyn NY, 2019) and Sometimes Seen Dreams (The Lodge Gallery, Lower East Side, NY, 2017). James has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions throughout the U.S. including Contemporary Women Paint: Abstract Expressions (Des Moines, IA, 2020), Sound & Color (SugarLift with the High Line Nine, Chelsea, NY, 2020) Look Again, Hollis Taggart Contemporary, Westport, CT, 2020), Refract Mere (Marquee Projects, Bellport, LI, 2020) and Taggart Times 7, (Hollis Taggart Contemporary, Chelsea, NY, 2020). James was recently listed in Top 20 Artists Shaping the New Decade by Daily Collector. Sometimes Seen Dreams was featured in the Art Critical Review Panel, and her two-person show The Thread was chosen as must see exhibitions by New York Magazine. She has also been featured in publications such as Two Coats of Paint, ArtSpace and Hyperallergic.