Foreword by Mark Read

Everyone remembers their first sighting of a Gary James. James is an artist without precedence. A creator of unique visions that in my opinion pay no homage nor draw inspiration from any painter who has gone before. That is perhaps one of the rarest statements I can make about an artist. It’s almost impossible for a painter living in the modern era where one is constantly immersed in images of supposedly relevant contemporary art to remain true to an intellectual template that solidified at an early age. There is a freshness in James’ work, a beguiling innocence that somehow enlivens my spirit, pervading even his most complex paintings. It reminds me that not all visual art that is memorable needs to evolve out of an art institution blessed by the appointed mandarins of the contemporary art world. I’m hugely relieved that the art of Gary James exists. It’s akin to a vigorous breath of fresh air in a stuffy room.

When I first viewed Gary’s paintings I was retrieved to my past, as keenly as if by sniffing some long forgotten odour, into the times when I would successfully appeal to my parents that I was not well enough to go to school. The day would be spent reading Rider Haggard and Kipling, happily inhabiting a bedroom festooned with images of tribal people in East Africa, views of Kilimanjaro and delicate biplanes taking smiling people to tented camps under baobabs. Pure Gary James. It’s a landmass fractured by the aftershocks of the slave trade, boundaries drawn up in Brussels by people who had never stepped foot on the continent and now with many self-imposed wounds. Happily Africa’s vastness is also a land of valid undamaged societies full of wise elders, impish boys and girls and mysterious rites and relics. It’s a continent inhabited by the mind of Gary James. Gary resides for years in his imaginary River Market. Through his beautifully constructed paintings and gorgeous carved frames we become intimate with the lives of all the inhabitants. How I would love to live there! Delicate balustrades and colourful carpets drying in the sun on warm cliffs that no doubt are reflecting the voices of happy people enjoying life in a most lovely nook somewhere in Africa. The fact that it doesn’t exist outside the mind of this extraordinary artist is, after spending some time with his work, almost impossible to believe. Such is the Clarity of Gary James’ imagination.

I am thrilled that this book is finally being published. It brings together in one volume most of the major works spanning a mature artist’s career. Gary works very slowly. His technique and the complexity of the subject demands that. Each frame alone takes him more time than most contemporary artists would take to paint an exhibition! It has long been a frustration to both the artist and myself that we have been unable to gather all his most profound works together from the various collections where they hang so that people can enjoy the extraordinary breadth of Gary’s vision. To a large extent his paintings are sequential, each unwrapping the story a little more. This publication succeeds completely in telling a tale which has evolved over decades.