"Miles Davis bends the notes. He doesn't play them. I bend the paint."
Williem de Kooning
Painting is where I listen most closely to what moves beneath the surface. I paint non-objective abstract works guided by intuition, memory, and movement. Making this work is deeply personal, and I feel compelled to honor my creative practice and share it. Painting fulfills a promise I made to myself during years of debilitating health challenges—to no longer postpone my creative life. My life and my art are lived in gratitude.
My process begins intuitively through automatic drawing and spontaneous mark-making. Translucent layers of acrylic paint follow, allowing composition, color, and value to emerge through editing and refinement. I trust the first mark to initiate a visual conversation, responding to each gesture as the painting clarifies its direction.
Vast skies and open prairie from my childhood in South Dakota shaped my early understanding of space, rhythm, and motion. Informed by formal studies in architecture and interior design, my work balances compositional discipline with energetic paint strokes. Structure provides a framework while movement activates the surface, encouraging sustained viewing and quiet discovery.
MARY JAMES | Artist
Lives & Works in
San Antonio, TX
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Bio
“Mary James’s paintings reveal an artist who understands that memory is not fixed, but layered, restless, and alive with motion — shaped by the confidence of someone who has lived deeply and returned to tell the story in color and movement.”
Mary paints richly layered, non-representational works that explore memory, resilience, and transformation through gesture, movement, and luminous color. Architecture, landscape, and figures appear and dissolve within her surfaces, inviting viewers to linger, reflect, and discover their own meanings.
Influenced by the Abstract Expressionist movement, Mary works primarily in acrylic and mixed media for the immediacy they provide. This immediacy supports her urgent, intuitive approach, transforming memory and emotion into visual experience. Intrigue emerges through bold, gestural marks, luminous color, movement, and layered texture. She embraces vulnerability in her work, allowing what moves through her to emerge
honestly onto the canvas.
After a long career in interior design followed by a period of disability, James now devotes herself fully to painting, realizing a lifelong dream. Over the past fifteen years, she has studied with numerous nationally and internationally acclaimed artists through workshops and mentorships. Her work has been featured in many exhibitions, including a solo show at Art Gallery Prudencia, and has received awards in juried exhibitions. Her paintings are held in private, corporate, and hospital collections across the United States. She lives and works as a full-time artist in San Antonio, Texas, and is represented by Art Gallery Prudencia.