Dana James

Hollis Taggart is pleased to present Ink Moon, the New York City-based artist Dana James’ third solo show with the gallery. Known for her signature pastel palette and distinctive mark making, James’ latest paintings are her most complex so far, oscillating between abstract impulsive brushwork and bold forms and lines. All nine paintings on view were created while the artist was pregnant, a profound experience that deeply influenced this body of work. Ink Moon will be on view on the first floor of Hollis Taggart at 521 West 26^th Street from September 4 through October 11, 2025, with an opening reception on Thursday, September 4^th, from 6-8PM.

Dana James’ (b. 1986) practice is driven by an exploration of dualities and the contradictions that shape the world around us, such as transience and permanence, darkness and light, and control and chaos. While James has always been interested in visually probing these dichotomies, the artist’s recent pregnancy resulted in a more experimental exploration of them. Having to surrender to the unknown, James embraced it, leading to bolder and more confident brushwork and expression. Describing how pregnancy impacted her newest work, James noted that she had to embrace a sense of mystery as well as things becoming obscured or eclipsed, an idea that is reflected in the many layers present in her canvases.

In her latest paintings, James’ signature lunar shapes and contours are met with some of her most expressive abstract gestures to date, creating cathartic explosions that are nonetheless rooted in the artist’s distinctive visual language. In the triptych Total Eclipse, for example, organic oval shapes resembling falling leaves depicted in pastels contrast with an almost entirely abstract panel that is an explosive celebration of darkness, with bold yellows, reds, and blues emerging from a dark smoky pigment that is new to James’ work and appears throughout the exhibition.

As in earlier bodies of work, James does not shy away from revealing her process as well as the rawness of the canvas underneath. The artists often adds and subtracts layers, creating and then erasing or blurring marks made with materials as varied as acrylic, crayon, pastel powder, and wax. In her newest works, the artist disguises her hand even less, leaving behind traces of marks clearly made by her fingers and the movement of her body. This imbues James’ canvases with a physicality and boldness that contrasts with the luminosity of her pastel color palette and some of the lighter marks that pepper her paintings. As with all her work, James’ latest paintings reward slow-viewing, with surprising additional layers of color and material emerging from the depths of each canvas with time.

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, New York; KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin; and Bode Projects, Berlin. In 2020, Daily Collector featured James in the article “Top 20 Artists Shaping the New Decade.” In 2023, James was featured as both a “Trending Artist” on Artsy and an “Artist to Watch” on Artnet. Her paintings are held in many private and public collections, including UBS Art Collection and Gibson & Dunn. James is represented by Hollis Taggart in New York and Bode Projects in Berlin.