Saturday, June 28, 2014

James Christensen Paintings

By Darren Hartley


James Christensen paintings are inspired by the world's myths, fables and tales of imagination. They add up to more than beautiful, sometimes curious looking, works of art. They look at the world as a classroom. This stems from the fact that James taught art professionally for over 20 years.

The early humorous James Christensen paintings were creations of fantasy images meant for the private amusement of James. As a child, James loved to tell stories and uses his imagination in both his playing and drawing activities. James attended Santa Monica City College, UCLA and Brigham Young University, where he earned a Masters degree.

James Christensen paintings were reflections of James' travels. He was a faculty member of Brigham Young University's art department in Provo, Utah, from 1976 and 1997. As a faculty member, he had the opportunity of travelling with his students to Mexico, Europe and Madrid, Spain.

James Christensen paintings provide a little lift to help people keep going. In a miniscule, they tell people that all things are possible provided they share in James' philosophy that believing is seeing and not the other way around.

James Christensen paintings include Waiting for the Tide. In it is featured a man standing on the shore and demanding for the tide to come in. Instead of demanding, he decides to sit back, relax, smell the seaweed and enjoy life as it is. He figures it's nice being just out so he enjoys his time by sipping a cup of tea with shots of fortitude.

There are James Christensen paintings that are love stories. A prime example of this is Twilight. It is rich in symbols representative of the close of a chapter, the twilight hour of the day, the final phase of the moon, the turning leaves on an autumn tree and the checkerboard road coming to an end. One symbolism from the painting could be interpreted as love coming in many different levels but one that is everlasting has the most important power of all.




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