Artist Statement

Painting and found object sculpture is the primary focus of my art practices. 

As a means of understanding my experience and to share them with others, I work with themes of my trans body, my emotional body, my other worldly energy, and my childhood in my work. I seek cohesion throughout my catalog of pieces, while, simultaneously lending the freedom to be a nuanced and dynamic being with various interests and articulations.

Connection fascinates me and I am influenced by daydreams of bodies within bodies and worlds within worlds. I see magic in the way our forms work with and within energies that are unseen and in the communication, beyond language, that comes through our material bodies. 

I am curious about the things we don’t talk about- the emotional complexities and impact of interpersonal relationships, what it means to struggle in a transactional and consumptive culture and the inherent beauty that exists despite reductive value systems. 

Within my practices I seek to find reprieve from the subtractive nature of performance and our world’s preoccupation with status, consumption and violence. I want my work to challenge me and to antagonize unconscious living. I am looking for a connection to something deeper, a universal truth to feel confronted or comforted by and I hope the viewer sees something recognizable in my work. 

-James Emmett