Artistic Style
In an early artist's statement James suggested her work was about "...the relationships between time, place and identity (when, where and who)...". Location continues to be an important element for James, and throughout her career the geographic context of New Zealand is evident within her work. Sometimes this is in a literal sense, drawing upon symbols from the New Zealand landscape (such as the native ferns in her exhibition New Zealand: Sleep in the Forest/Dreams of the Sea). Othertimes, James's work speaks to its situation within the context of New Zealand painting, using a palette, scale and modernist aesthetic reminiscent of other New Zealand painters (such as Rita Angus, Nigel Brown and Michael Smither).
Others have noted that her images are drawn from both art historical and media sources. These images are frequently figurative, such as her re-presentations of the portraits of Iraqi soldiers taken from newspapers or scenes of voluptuous and entangled bodies from classical and Renaissance art works, such as in her Discord/ Out of the Chaos series.
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