James Ulmer lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens, New York. He graduated from the University of the Arts in 2005 with a degree in Illustration and Design and was awarded the Thorton Oakly Medal by the Society of Illustrators. Ulmer was a member of Philadelphia’s legendary Space 1026 Collective from 2008-2011. His recent shows include solo exhibitions at The Pit, Los Angeles, CA (2024, 2022); V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2022); The Hole, New York, NY (2021); Marvin Gardens, New York, NY (2021); PmAm Gallery, London, England (2021); and JJ.Amala Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2019). Ulmer’s work has been included in notable thematic shows including Good Pictures, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, New York, NY (2020)and A Being in The World, Salon 94, New York, NY (2016). His work can be found in the public collection of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine and the Long Beach Museum of Art in California as well as numerous private collections worldwide.

Ulmer draws from a diverse range of influences, positioning himself within a lineage of artists who engage with painting through non-traditional visual mediums. His work resembles comic stills, each presenting a compact narrative featuring brightly colored, flatly rendered figures in everyday moments— swimming in a lake, sitting at the dinner table, driving a car, or gazing out a window. But Ulmer's paintings present color and abstraction in a way that draws attention to the entangled tensions that exist in any moment. Stripped of facial expressions and set against bold, graphic fields of color, Ulmer’s figures are deliberately generic. While he remains anchored in figurative painting’s historical role of depicting daily life, they don’t represent reality, but a sort of sensory composition of a moment.