James Alexander Lewis

James Alexander Lewis grew up in an environment that valued creativity and treated becoming an artist as something to work toward rather than something to justify. His mother was consistently supportive of his artistic ambitions from an early age, framing conversations around progress and commitment rather than financial viability. His grandmother, a Croatian immigrant, was also a formative influence. Though not an artist by profession, she was a maker, sewing intricately designed pillows and dolls by hand. Growing up in a home shaped by that kind of labor instilled in Lewis a desire to make things himself.

One of his earliest memories of drawing dates back to early childhood. Around the age of three or four, he would pause episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants and copy individual frames onto loose-leaf paper. When his mother noticed the accuracy of those drawings, she named what she saw directly. From that moment on, Lewis understood himself as an artist and felt compelled to keep drawing.

Lewis is currently completing the final semester of his BFA in painting at Truman State University. Prior to college, much of his artmaking was driven by a desire for validation and technical replication. His early work focused on representational accuracy, often measured against an external image. College disrupted that pattern. The physical and mental demands of tight, representational oil painting, combined with managing scoliosis, led him to reconsider both medium and process. Turning to soft pastel for its speed and immediacy allowed him to reconnect with drawing as an expressive act rather than an endurance test.

Experimentation has since become central to his practice. Lewis moves between painting, drawing, and hand-stitched canvas, recently incorporating sewing techniques learned indirectly through his grandmother’s example. Stitching raw canvas into folds and drapes introduces physical depth and vulnerability into the work, allowing surface and structure to function together.

Recurring elements appear across his work, though he resists fixing their meaning. Portraiture has long been a foundation, but faces have gradually shifted away from specificity toward abstraction, aiming instead at a universal human form. A recurring pink dog or deer-like figure appears intermittently, including in Objects Like Gods I. Lewis does not attempt to decode this presence, preferring to let it operate intuitively and remain open to interpretation.

Paul Klee has been a particularly affirming influence. Encountering Klee’s work helped Lewis recognize intuition and universality as valid artistic strategies rather than deviations from rigor. That recognition strengthened his confidence in allowing forms to emerge rather than be forced.

Lewis’s creative process prioritizes speed and surprise. He aims to let his hands move faster than conscious thought so that figures can surface organically. Music sometimes accompanies this process, though silence is often necessary to avoid cognitive overload. He is interested in integrating meditation into his practice, treating artmaking as both physical and mental alignment.

His surroundings frequently enter the work, sometimes retroactively. In Weeds: Cowboy Silo, Lewis worked with a limited palette of green and purple pastels inspired by springtime fields encountered while commuting between St. Louis and his college town. Only later did the painting take on new meaning after returning to an apartment overtaken by mold and navigating displacement during the school year. The image now reads as a record of rupture, endurance, and forced renewal.

A typical day in his studio includes writing poetry, producing multiple drawings, and advancing a painting. Creative blocks are not treated as failures. Lewis allows periods of low output to exist without judgment, trusting that they are temporary and often followed by renewed intensity.

Lewis understands the meaning of his work as something co-created with the viewer. If pressed to name a theme, he suggests premonition, though he ultimately hopes the work functions as a site of recognition, allowing viewers to feel seen or supported in their own internal lives. Success is measured by creative and moral honesty rather than outcome.

Looking ahead, Lewis is interested in expanding his work spatially. He envisions site-specific installations where viewers physically interact with draped canvas, lifting and searching for their own interpretations. Drawing and poetry are intended to exist alongside one another, with a future book project in mind. His upcoming BFA capstone exhibition at Truman State will be the first opportunity to test these ideas in a shared space, marking a new phase in a practice rooted in intuition, risk, and trust in emergence.