James White’s commitment to representational painting imbues his work with a fundamental permanence, underscoring the continuity in moments of silence, doubt and repose that have been the subject of art for centuries. The inspiration for his paintings comes from photographs White records throughout his everyday life. Stripped of their colour, the focus of each painting shifts to the immaculate detail rendered by the artist’s hand. Through his depiction of familiar objects; glasses half empty, shattered with broken shards on the countertop, a running faucet and a door ajar, White shifts the focus from what is presented to the elusive. Implying a narrative arc, the isolated moments create an ominous psychological space for suspense and reflection on the actions that lie outside the frame.

James White lives and works in London, United Kingdom. He received his BA from the Wimbledon School of Art in 1989 and his MA from the Royal College of Art in 1991. In June of 2020 he will be included in exhibitions at the Fernet Branca Foundation, France and at MARTa Herford, Germany. He has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions at international institutions such as The Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas, TX; Kunsthal, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; the Olbricht Collection, Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen, Germany; and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London, United Kingdom amongst others. White was a John Moores 24 prizewinner in 2008 and the subject of a major monograph, James White: Paintings, with essays by Martin Herbert and Jeremy Millar, published in 2011 by FUEL. In 2017 White’s large-format paintings were presented in the publication Bodies, and in 2018 Small Paintings was published, both books were published by Kerber Verlag.