Claerwen James


Claerwen Laura James is a British painter.

Early life

James is the daughter of the Australian author Clive James and his wife, the scholar Prue Shaw. James studied zoology at the University of Oxford.
She went on to conduct postgraduate research on the molecular biology of programmed cell death in the Biochemistry of the Cell Nucleus Laboratory at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and completed a PhD. During this time she was a visiting researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, in the US.

Career

James specialises in portraiture, particularly of young people, painted from photographs rather than live sittings.
James began painting during her undergraduate studies. Following the completion of her academic studies, she decided to revert to her original passion for art and between 1999 and 2003 enrolled on a painting course at the Slade School of Art. Graduating in 2003, James achieved a first class degree, and was awarded the Melvill Nettleship Prize for Figure Composition. From 2003 to 2004 she continued her studies at the Prince's Drawing School after obtaining a graduate bursary.
James has been represented by the Flowers Central Gallery since 2006, with solo shows in London in 2006, 2008, and 2013. She had her debut at Flowers, New York in 2010. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Scheringa Museum of Realist Art in Spanbroek, in the Netherlands, and the University of Cambridge.
As well as painting, James produces prints, utilising techniques that include block-printing and hand-stencilled silk screening. She is one third of design partnership, Cambridge Imprint, where she has designed decorative patterns for the sleeves for Persephone Books, and collaborated with heritage shoe brand Grenson on a new printed design shoe.

Footnotes