Dana James

Dana James creates works with an exquisite sense of touch, incorporating multiple mediums and textures. Central to James’s work is the idea of materials transcending their nature. These recent paintings coalesce bright, pastel palettes with recycled canvas. She incorporates unorthodox materials such as flecks of tin foil and iridescent encaustic that create surprising glimmers of light embedded within opaque color fields and evoke the magical play of moonlight or the glinting of the ocean. Her works manipulate materials to create such sublime effects that recall nature, and endeavor to capture memory and ephemerality as a feeling or moment caught in time. Drawing from the tradition of twentieth-century color field painting, James gives form to captivating dualities—transience and permanence, geometric and amorphous, light and dark. 

Dana James was born in New York City, where she is currently based. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2008 and has since had her paintings featured in numerous solo, two-person, and group exhibitions in the US and abroad. James has had solo shows at Hollis Taggart Contemporary, New York; Bode Projects, Berlin; and The Lodge Gallery, New York. Her 2017 solo show Sometimes Seen Dreams was selected as a featured exhibit for the Art Critical Review Panel discussion series. In 2020, Daily Collector featured James in the article “Top 20 Artists Shaping the New Decade.” James’s artwork has also been featured or reviewed in Artforum, New York Magazine, Two Coats of Paint, and Hyperallergic, among others. Her paintings are held in many private and public collections, including UBS Art Collection and Gibson & Dunn. James is represented by Hollis Taggart Contemporary in New York and Bode Projects in Berlin.