In honor of boating season, our next Artist Spotlight is on Roster Artist James Goss - lover of boats, lakes, and the beauty of summer light. Goss has painted landscapes since 1975. The second of eight children and the son of an Officer in the Marines, Goss moved to Hudson Falls, New York at the age of 12. It was here that Goss developed a long, deep fascination with nature. Of his long-time home in the high Adirondacks, from which much of his life’s work stems, Goss says, “The wonder of nature is endless. I’m here by design, not by accident.” He spent some time in New York City as the former co-Director of White Columns from 1981-82. In 1983, he returned to the Adirondacks where he still lives and works to this day.

Goss considers taking his boat out on the lake and tending to his home garden as part of his artistic practice. Only once he’s spent enough time outdoors watching and absorbing do the images, emotions, and colors appear to him, ready to be transposed in paint. Rather than trying to faithfully capture each petal within one of his zinnias or blades of grass in the surrounding meadows, Goss paints the experience of close looking, not the close looking itself. The supersaturated color palette is largely responsible for the work’s surrealist qualities. Mixing his own hues, Goss prioritizes vibrancy and intensity above all else, hoping to reproduce the naturally occurring luminosity he witnesses daily. Though he avoids entirely monochromatic schemas, a single hue often dominates each landscape, not unlike the way sunlight envelops and transforms everything it touches.

In her press release for Goss's 2023 exhibition "Gates of Paradise" at The Pit Los Angeles, Tara Anne Dalbow described Goss's works as "technicolor dreamscapes, full of flowers large as stars, lakes flushed in rose-colored light, and dissolving horizons that collapse the boundaries between water and sky..."

She continued, "Ever since James Goss was a child, he looked at things very closely, blades of grass, flowers, paintings. The feeling of first staring into the center of a blossom, seeing a whole new world inside, or discovering the elaborate map of ridges and furrows on the underside of a leaf, is familiar, if not ubiquitous. Perhaps what makes Goss unique is that he never stopped looking, never allowed his sense of wonder and awe in the face of nature’s mundane miracles to lessen."

IN THE STUDIO

"In forgoing photorealist representations," writes Tara Anne Dalbow, "the artist relies on the materiality of his paint to depict detail. Goss sculpts, scrapes, layers, and manipulates enormous amounts of oil to emulate the crenelation of a flower petal, the lushness of a patch of grass, and the grit of a sandy beach. To see the ridges and grooves on the trunks of the elm trees is to feel their scaley bark beneath your palm in an inspired moment of synesthesia. The densely built-up paint on the canvas also produces a quasi-bas-relief, with the objects in the foreground appearing to rise out of the canvas... The supersaturated color palette is largely responsible for the work’s surrealist qualities. Mixing his own hues, Goss prioritizes vibrancy and intensity above all else, hoping to reproduce the naturally occurring luminosity he witnesses daily. Though he avoids entirely monochromatic schemas, a single hue often dominates each landscape, not unlike the way sunlight envelops and transforms everything it touches."

"If I pay close enough attention and stay open, a conversation starts between nature and myself - I become a sort of channel."

--- James Goss

NEW WORKS

In his most recent works, James Goss returns again to Lake Champlain, to its light, its seasons, its patient insistence. Like Monet's Giverny or van Gogh's wheat fields, the landscape is not backdrop but collaborator, shifting just enough each year to demand a new response. Lately, small figures have begun to appear along the paths. These figures have quiet presences, neither lost nor arriving, simply moving through. It is a subtle addition, but a telling one: after fifty years of painting this place, Goss is still paying attention. The awe hasn't diminished. If anything, it has deepened into something closer to devotion.

"Although I paint primarily for myself, I fully intend for others to enjoy the work as well. I think of it like preparing a meal I love and then sharing it with others in the hope that they will also find nourishment and pleasure in it."

--- James Goss

James Goss, born in 1956 in Bainbridge, Maryland, received his at BFA Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1980. His recent exhibitions include solo exhibitions at Eligere, Seoul, South Korea (2024); The Pit, Los Angeles, CA (2023); WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong (2022); The Pit, Palm Springs, CA (2022); and Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2021). He has also been included in group exhibitions at WOAW Gallery, Singapore (2023); Frieze No. 9 Cork Street with The Pit, London, UK (2022); and Harper’s, East Hamptons, NY (2021). His work can be found in numerous private collections in the US and abroad.