James Chronister

About JAMES CHRONISTER

In his paintings, James Chronister has produced a visual language that oscillates between personal and universal ideas of landscape and place.  Based on his own photographs of his native state of Montana, Chronister renders images using thinned black oil paint on a white or neutral-colored ground, conveying space and depth utilizing mark-making akin to an intaglio print.  In these recent works, the white ground becomes highlights, the opaque passages become shadows and cross-hatching become mid-tones.  Unassuming but vastly complex in their subtlety, these scenes of nature depict an unseen environment that is both rich and rewarding of investigation.  

Though reminiscent of such postmodern masters as Gerhard Richter and Luc Tuymans, Chronister has devised a painterly language much his own. Working with a tiny brush and one dark, neutral color on carefully hued, off-white canvases, Chronister achieves a startling range of tonality and depth. Viewed up-close, the paintings are constructed by a series of small, discrete marks: a binary system of data--like type on a page--that results in a surreal density of information. Step back, and the pictures cohere. The eye and mind struggle to reconcile the illusionism of these paintings with the narrow, restrained means of their technique.

— Jake Longstreth 

Chronister earned his BFA (High Honors) as a University Scholar (Davidson Honors College) from the University of Montana, Missoula in 2001 and his MFA (with Distinction) from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco in 2004.  Chronister was awarded the Fox and Miles Scholarships while at the University of Montana and the Richard K. Price Scholarship while at the California College of the Arts.  In 2013, Chronister was awarded the Artist-In-Residence at the Lux Art Institute in Encinitas, California, which was accompanied by a survey of his work from the years 2009-2013.  Chronister was nominated for the SECA Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2010 and 2018.  In 2020 Chronister was a recipient of the Bay Area Visual Artist Production Relief Grant from Evergold Projects, San Francisco.  Chronister has been a visiting artist at the California College of the Arts, the Lux Art Institute and the San Francisco Art Institute. 

Public collections of Chronister’s work include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Stanford Hospital, San Francisco International Airport, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, San Francisco General Hospital, Nion McEvoy Family Collection, Paul Wattis III Family Collection and the Howard Tullman Family Collection.

The artist lives and works in Missoula, Montana.