James Whitehead is the 3-Dimensional Artist Spotlight winning artist for the month of September 2020. He is an award-winning artist based in San Diego, California, USA.
James’s Solo Art Exhibition will be featured on the website for the month of September 2020. The gallery will promote James and his work on the Fusion Art website, individual online press releases to hundreds of outlets, email blasts to over 5,500+ buyers, collectors, galleries and art professionals, in online event calendars, art news websites and through the gallery’s extensive social media outlets. Fusion Art’s objective is to promote the Artist Spotlight winning artists, worldwide, to art professionals, gallerists, collectors and buyers.
Please read James’s Biography and Artist Statement below as he describes his history and inspiration in his own words. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see his “Flying Fish” series exhibition.
If you are interested in purchasing any of these award-winning pieces, or to see more of James’s work, please visit his website.
Also, please visit Fusion Art’s YouTube Channel to see James’s Solo Art Exhibition Video.
Thank you to all the artists who participated in the Artist Spotlight competition and congratulations to James and the other Artist Spotlight winning artists.
Artist Biography
Educated as a painter and sculptor, trained as an educator, engineer and cabinetmaker, James Whitehead has been an art maker his entire life. He has worked as an international educator, instructing students from most parts of the world in visual and electronic arts. The influence of his work as a teacher in what some would call “childlike visions” are apparent in his much of his work. For example, the “Flying Fish” series was born from the minds of children and the inspiration of the whimsical animistic carvings of Bali. Given the assignment of melding of nature, the animal world in particular, and the machinery of man, second grade students created creatures of beauty and whimsy reaching heights that only imagination can achieve. The sculptures in this series are an interpretation of their ideas. Constructed primarily of wood (nature) and metal (man), they are to be suspended, as though in flight or gliding in the weightlessness of water. So far, all pieces are articulated and in some cases move slightly with the air currents around them. Viewers are left to make their own interpretations regarding their connection or message about environment, nature, industry, etc.
James grew up in Miami FL during the height of the Vietnam War. With the looming draft and no path forward towards the cost of education, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, served his tour, received the GI Bill, went to the University of Florida, received a BFA and MFA from OSU. While attending UF, Whitehead accepted an apprenticeship to become a cabinetmaker, a skill that would serve his artistic endeavors. He worked as cabinetmaker, furniture maker and later an art teacher in rural North Florida and eventually teaching visual and electronic arts in Saudi Arabia. Throughout his life, James has continued to produce and exhibit his original art. He currently has pieces in private collections around the world. He presently works and lives in San Diego, CA
Artist Statement
Different, unusual, not ordinary, whimsical. These are a few of the words others have used to describe my work. Since moving to Miami in fourth grade, I have lived near an ocean. The sea provides us with food, fills us with calm and wonder but never lets us forget her power and absolute wrath. Artistically, the sea moves me. The shapes, colors, movement are boundless and I see the same cycle of movement in wood, stone…nature. I enjoy combining materials, wood, glass, and metal, finding the symmetry and balance between the textures, colors…the visual weight. When I became teacher, I soon recognized that I now had a new medium to work with, unencumbered ideas, I mean of course their ideas, but I have been able explore the visual interpretations of children from around the world and reinterpret in my own work. (I know it sounds like stealing from children but my attorney says he is pretty sure that I am probably in the clear.) So far, none has caught up to me.
