Artist JAMES "JIMMY" GREEN
I am a visual communicator and believe that art is a language that connects with people on multiple levels. There are two main influences in my background that have helped shape and hone my outlook as an artist. The first is the years spent as an apprentice to muralist Jon Onye Lockard. He was a painter in the Black Arts Movement and one of its goals was to create “art for people’s sake.” Another aim of this genre was to reach people with positive and inspiring imagery as well as to reinforce a proud collective identity. While working on murals, there were ongoing discussions as to how the work would be “read” or interpreted by the viewing public. These discussions included not only the images but also color choices, composition, and guided emphasis. Under his direction, we produced murals that are installed in Detroit’s Wayne State University, Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, and at the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at The University of Michigan. After that I went to The Rhode Island School of Design and graduated with a BFA from the Illustration Department. This field, by definition, relies on art’s power to communicate a narrative. As an illustrator, I show elements that are suggested by the text and enrich viewers’ understanding. These two disciplines—public art and illustration—inform my fine art.
In my forty years as a visual artist, I have participated in innumerable solo and group fine art exhibitions. As a commercial artist, I have created theater posters, CD covers as well as illustrations for magazines and book covers. Throughout my career, I have made a conscious effort to speak to the African American community by making direct references to its history, culture, and aspirations. I place my work squarely in the legacy of the Black Arts Movement and in 2020 I was invited to become a member of the historic Black group Weusi Artist Collective. I consider myself a visual narrator. Much of my early work addressed the topics of racial identity and social critique. Although these are still reoccurring themes in my art recently, I have also created works that are less didactic and convey the wide range of human experiences in a vast range of subjective colors, hues and themes that can be both specific and universal. I feel that my work has grown more poetic.
I am a Black artist. This is a statement about my racial identity and my artistic alignment. The African American experience has been the decided focus of my artwork since adolescence. The themes and information on this topic are vast and I find them creatively inspiring. They range from the aesthetes of traditional African art to contemporary politics and ethos to the speculative musings of Afrofuturism. In hindsight my body of work is an exploration of the following questions I posed over 35 years ago;
What is the image of our culture…our heritage… our history… our daily lives… our hopes and dreams…? What is the image of us, the way we got here, and the way we be?
