James K-M on Salt Spring Island
James K-M has been painting and exhibiting in Canada and internationally since 1978.
Artist, Curator & Educator
James K-M is a Canadian artist known for his abstract, geometric, and metaphysical paintings and sculptures. His artistic career spans several decades, with notable developments and achievements.
Early work:
Abstract geometric paintings on canvas or wood
Mid-career:
Digital paintings and interactive works
Recent work:
Abstract paintings and sculptures
Working in his studio in the quiet natural environment of Salt Spring Island is a contrast to James’ former loft live-work space in Vancouver’s Gastown. James’ current studio is in a free-standing building that was originally the blueprint and storage area of the notable island architect, Hank Schubart.
This space offers the capacity to produce larger works. His 14 paiinting series, Mirrors ,was his first major artwork on the island. Continuing in his signature palette of 14 colours, he has recently completed other series: Veils and Bookmarks, and is currently producing the Silent Table series.
Artworks
Recent Artworks
Presence of Absence
ABS Sculpture
Mirror Series
Shown on Salt Spring
2020
Pyramid in Studio
The inaugural work in the new studio was building and photographing a previously unexhibited pyramid.
2021
Talk and Exhibition at Point Gallery
The first exhibition on Salt Spring Island accompanied his talk: Ancestral Memory and the Merkaba-Vortex
2022
Havana Biennial
Participating from Salt Spring Island, James’ work Presence of Absence, digital images included in the Complicit Landscapes component of the Biennial.
2024
Salt Spring Arts Spring Art Show
Pyramid and ABS scupltures were shown in the Re:Location show at Mahon Hall.
2024
Provocation
Ceremony of Privacy shown in the first of the Provocation series, on Baker Road.
2024
Havana Biennial
Current work in progress, in conjunction with the upcoming Unseen Island project.
Critical Essays
CHILDREN’S GAME
James K-M is an artist obsessed with the simplicity that covers all truth or deep knowledge of the world, and his intention is to play at recomposing all that ancestral knowledge in the most innocent way possible, as a child would do with the structures created by The Creator…
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Pavel Alejandro Barrios Sosa
CAVE PAINTINGS?
These paintings shift us beholders into multivalent worlds in training us to see mythically the world around us.
It is hard work. A glance or a few minutes’ contemplation is but a prelude. You have to absorb the patterns and immerse yourself in them. Then you see.
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Eric McLuhan
EMPATHY FOR ABSTRACTION
For each shape in a James K-M painting, if we could substitute the terms “ideal form,” “state of the environment,” or “complexities of perceptual space” (as Roberto Calasso has suggested readers of Kafka do, substituting “Law” for “Castle”), his metaphorical claims for the value of hard-edge abstraction would emerge.
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Bill Jeffries