Artist Statement
I am a figure painter who uses cocktails of stock visual symbolism to play with the construction of meaning, both in imagery and people. By using personal acquaintances as models, I attempt to interface what I project onto them with their own aspirations, to create fraught and malleable documents of our relationships with both each other and the outside world.
In an effort to more explicitly frame the elements in my constructions, I remove all background elements from my pictures. Initially this was done with exposed metal surfaces, but since 2013 I have employed flat white backgrounds to generate a space of maximized visual clarity. Objects such as food, musical instruments, insects, and animal skulls are employed for their visceral associations. The apple, with its loaded history in the Western canon is avoided unless absolutely needed as a blunt implement. The pepper has only existed within the consciousness of Western art for five centuries or so. It allows me to create an allegorical space where there exists the possibility for novel interpretations and narratives to take hold.
These portraits are meant to border on storytelling, and it is my hope that like a game of telephone, the assembled elements will be transformed first by the act of painting, and later in the act of viewing. I approach each work with concrete themes in mind, but try to avoid prescribed resolutions.
Bio
James Stamboni was born in Mount Kisco, NY. He graduated with his BFA from SUNY New Paltz before getting certified to teach art in New York State’s public schools. In 2016, he was poisoned by a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. The associated connective tissue damage would cost him the ability to walk on hard surfaces without the use of leg braces, as well as the ability to work as an educator in a public setting. Over the following six years, complications from this iatrogenic chronic illness nearly took his life on three occasions, before a combination of experimental treatments stabilized him enough that he could his apartment and begin painting again.
He currently lives in Lower Westchester, where he splits his time between commissioned portraiture and large scale figurative works. Autism allows him to replicate most things he sees in two dimensions, and to retain pretty much any information that kindles his interest. You are encouraged to talk to him about jazz, or most other music.
Addendum: on humanity
Sometimes, I'm in a gallery, and I read an artist statement, and there is a passage of words that is so farcical I find myself laughing out loud. The gallery press release is an idiom. I have some understanding of it, enough that I can spot when something is devolving into an unintentional form of self-parody. You can read my artist statement above, where I do my best to approximate that idiom, while still actually saying things.
I recently had a lay person in my apartment and they saw all the paintings, and they commented on them. Rather than comparing me to Dali, (which is what I usually get), they compared me to Norman Rockwell. That made me feel like I had really succeeded at something. Because I put a lot of time into my faces. More than I'd have to if I was just articulating an image. But I'm not. I genuinely care about the people I'm painting. They are friends, comrades, associates, and they are normal working class people who I am portraying in exceptional surroundings. The exceptional surroundings aren't going anywhere, but the fact that the humanity of these individuals reads as more remarkable than the variety of symbolic objects floating around to them, makes me feel like on some level I have my priorities straight.
Oil painting isn't the best idiom for communicating political ideas to people. But it's the idiom I have. We've been living through exceptional times for a while now, but we're reaching a point when a lot of previously insulated upper middle class people can't ignore it. So in that vein, I invite you to look at the wide range of people I have depicted and consider that the drama I surround them in is a reflection of very real and harrowing struggles actual people are engaging with. I'm a disabled guy living on SSDI. I can make beautiful paintings but there's not much I can do to help my fellow man. If you have expendable time and resources, I encourage you to begin engaging in mutual aid, and looking for ways to serve the most vulnerable members of your local communities.
Thank you.
