Whether you’re looking outside at an overcast winter day or at the parade of alarming events in the news, the view is bleak. If the two phenomena shared a hue, it would be gunmetal gray.
The happy riot of color in Jimmie James’ paintings, currently displayed at 571 Projects in Stowe, is therefore deeply welcome. The Brooklyn artist’s solo show, called “stories change,” emits bright oranges, reds, pinks, yellows and more in abstract forms ranging from bulbous to geometric.
James’ compositions range widely, too. The works, in acrylic on canvas (and one on watercolor paper), can be crowded, layered and spilling over the edges of their canvases — or clean-lined and spacious, defined by their surface dimensions. One painting is streaked with drips; another has a thick scribble of pencil and the suggestion of a female figure. That’s an impressive variety in a show that includes only nine hung works. (Gallery founder and curator Sophie Bréchu-West can bring out several more that she has stacked between bookcases in the gallery’s small second-story space.)
James’ titles for his abstract works often suggest a narrative or figurative referent — “a narrow opportunity,” “a story with many tales,” “her silhouette,” “harvest moon” — leading viewers to try to puzzle out how they might apply. But his decision to put the titles in lowercase is a signal that they aren’t definitive. He leaves interpretation to the viewer.
“Abstract art is not entertainment,” James, 70, said by phone from his home in Red Hook. A painting of, say, a boat could be viewed as a kind of entertainment, he suggested. “But abstract art makes you work. You’re a part of it,” he explained. “I don’t give it meaning; you give it meaning.”
The titles come to him intuitively, as do the paintings themselves and his sense of when one is finished.
In that spirit, “stories change,” the show’s eponymous painting, might reference a change of direction in life. Vaguely rectilinear forms in shades of green on either side of the 24.75-by-32.5-inch work frame more organic ones in red, pink and yellow. What appear to be a footprint and an arrow join a horizontal swath of juxtaposed and layered shapes that stand out against a white-painted background. The latter, far from pure, hints at more color underneath — and perhaps other changed paths.
The artist’s own story is full of variety and change. James started his postgraduate life studying architecture at Pratt Institute but dropped out after finding the discipline too prescriptive. (“If you need a corner, you have to draw a corner; painting is, in some ways, the opposite,” he said.) Since then, he has plumbed creative pursuits of all stripes. A guitar player and singer, he performs and has composed music and written lyrics for Broadway shows and film. He has created album covers for jazz musicians such as Nina Simone and acted in plays, including one by Tony Award winner Suzan-Lori Parks.
I don’t give it meaning; you give it meaning.
Jimmie james
And he has traveled. James recently returned from more than a decade abroad, where he painted his way through rice fields in Thailand, the Japanese city of Yokohama and parts of Spain before settling in Berlin for five years. The exhibited works at 571 Projects were all made in Berlin between 2021 and 2023.
Among the most recent are two hard-edge paintings, “her silhouette” and “balance,” both 60 by 40 inches, that present flat bands of color against plain white canvas in roughly equal proportions. But unlike in the impersonal and precisely executed hard-edge products of the 1960s movement, James’ lines aren’t perfect. Muddled edges abound, and, in “balance,” one red arc is made with a partially dry brush.
More textured than those two is the equally large work “collateral,” a vertical 60-by-42-inch composition of overlapping crescents. Oriented like paired eyebrows and bags under the eye, the crescents’ colors of peach, greens and light blue turn sheer against the same forms in black and gray, leaving the impression of a complicated and layered dynamism.
James, who has studied the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and the idea of a collective unconscious, said he considers his paintings a medium for messages that others might find in his work. Whatever wildly varied views his works inspire, the joy they express in color itself is the artist’s own.
“My palette has definitely brightened as I’ve gotten older,” James said. “I’m as happy as I’ve ever been in my life.” ➆
“stories change: recent paintings by Jimmie James,” on view through May 9 at 571 Projects in Stowe.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Living Color | In a Stowe exhibition, painter Jimmie James’ vibrant abstractions are up for interpretation”
This article appears in March 4-11 • 2026.
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