James Seevers is originally from San Mateo, CA.   He moved to Oakland in 2001 to attend CCA and received a BFA with distinction in painting and drawing in 2005.  Over the past ten years, James has worked as a general contractor and also founded a 501c3 arts advocacy organization with his brothers.  James has been on a skateboard since he could walk and he is still pushing.   Currently working nights, he focuses on creating art and music during the day.  James lives in Oakland with his wife.  Here is what he has to say about his fine art:

All of my work stems from my relationship with the natural world, beginning with the land in and around San Mateo County where I was born and raised. Memory and dream, as well as the physicality of stepping into these hills and forests, constantly inform my perception and representation of the landscape. In the past few years, my work has grown to include ideas as large as the universe, as well as concepts involving the smallest, most fundamental pieces of our being.

I attempt to flesh out the unseen landscape only experienced through other planes of existence. One articulation of this unseen landscape is the Line. Reduced to its most basic definition a line is the space between two points. All human perception passes through the brain, a series of synapse firings, nodes, or “points” in space and time. When you look at my paintings, drawings, or sculpture, a causal relationship is formed between the image and your brain. To trace the path of this relationship is to draw a line.

One idea I find myself returning to is borrowed from theoretical physics; that the most basic pieces of our existence may not be particles or “points”, but multi-dimensional lines, curled in on themselves or straight, vibrating at numerous frequencies in as many as eleven dimensions. Superstring Theory, the Internet (and all of its billions of invisible lines and networks), a city map, its streets, lines drawn by my steps, computer circuit boards traced by electrical current, geometry as shape governed by unseen laws (mathematics), even the writing on this page is line as metaphor: The Line imbued with meaning.

Another recurring theme in my work could be called a kind of supernatural allegory. Physics supports the idea that there are kinds of matter and energy which occur throughout the universe yet cannot be explained by our current understanding. I attempt to structure a loose metaphorical framework onto which these phenomenon might be placed.

My most recent body of work over the past few years has focused on representations of reality on three different size scales: universal, human, and quantum. The brain’s physical structure at a very small scale is beginning to be explored more in science and images of this amazing research have been finding their way into my work.

“I attempt to paint that which we know is there, but cannot see.”

Exhibition History

-”Overhung”-Boontling Gallery, Oakland, March ‘05
-”Championship Lovemaking”-Red Ink Studios, San Francisco, May ‘05
-”Three Paintings”-Clean, Oakland, November-December ‘05
-”Overhung 2: Hungover”-Boontling Gallery, Oakland, March ‘06
-”Friends of the Arts”-222 Club, San Francisco, April ‘06
-”Magic Stones in the Secret Cave”-Floral Gallery, Oakland, Spring ‘06
-”Art + Auction III”- Bonham and Butterfields, San Francisco Spring ‘06
-”We Can Still See the Sky”-Clean, Oakland, June ‘06
-”Community Virulogy”-LoBot Gallery, Oakland, July ‘06
-”Silence Is the Water Rushing Beneath Us”-Clean, Oakland, October’06
-”Overhung 3: Well Hung”-Boontling Gallery, Oakland, March ‘07
-”The Big Tiny”-Red Ink Studios, San Francisco, December ‘07
-”Velocipedemania”-Rock, Paper, Scissors, Oakland, February ‘08
-”Destroy All Monsters”-111 Minna, San Francisco, September ‘08
-”Sew-Op Benefit”-Cellspace, San Francisco, September ‘08
-”Malpractice”-111 Minna, San Francisco, February ‘09
-”The Stones You’ve Never Known You Knew”-510 Skateboarding,May August ‘09
-“The Wandering Flood Moves Through Us”-Fivepoints Arthouse, San Francisco, December ‘10-January ‘11
-“Matter Matters”-As Is Exhibitions, Oakland, February ‘11
-“Local Arts For Healthy Hearts”-Triton Museum, Santa Clara, April ‘11
-“Reflection Seen”- Fivepoints Arthouse, San Francisco, September ‘11
-“Never Not Enough” – Forthrite Printshop, Oakland, February ‘12
-“Experimental Notations” – Rock, Paper, Scissors / Adobe Books, Oakland / San Francisco, September ‘13
-“Axonal Dendritics” – Session Space Collective, Oakland, November ’14
-“That Which You Know Is There, But You Can Not See” – Forthrite Printshop, Oakland, December ’15
-“Time Becoming Perception” – Independent Brewing, Oakland, September ’16
-“You Are Surrounded” – Forthrite Printshop, Oakland, December ’16
-“Abstract Abstract” – Forthrite Printshop, Oakland, December ’17
-“One Big Bucket”, Session Space Collective, Oakland, March ’18
-“Oakland Parks Benefit”, Oakland Museum, April ’18
-“The Moon Show”, Forthrite Printshop, Oakland, December ’18
-“Axonal Dendritics 2”, Forthrite Printshop, Oakland, December ’19

Other Notable Experience

-Curator for Clean Gallery from June 2006 through March 2007, organizing and executing monthly openings and general maintenance of the gallery

-The creation of a sound composition used in the scoring of a documentary shown at the 2008 Oakland International Film Festival