Colleen James
Artist Statement
I am a painter and mixed media artist focused on the abstracted natural world, imagined landscapes and my own dreamscapes. I choose shapes that relate to nature without depicting anything recognizable, so that the viewer finds both familiarity and ambiguity in the forms. My paintings are influenced by daily walks in nature at Mills Reservation in Cedar Grove, NJ with my dog Monty. My latest work from 2026 challenges the classic rectangular stretcher, by using a rounded shape as the painting surface. I’m exploring how the subject of the painting speaks to the container, with figures and shapes in dialogue with an organic frame.
