Isherwood James

James Isherwood is a New York-based painter whose work examines architecture and landscape within the surreal context of alternate realities, time, memory, and place.

His paintings have been shown in New York, Toronto, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, and Valencia, Spain. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Parsons School of Design in New York. Isherwood has been awarded residencies from The Constance Saltonstall Foundation For The Arts, (2022) Fellowship, Ithaca, New York; Willapa Bay AiR (2022), Oysterville, Washington; The Mabel Residency at The Norman Bird Sanctuary (2019), Middletown, RI and Virginia Center For Creative Arts, (2018) Robert Johnson Fellowship, Amherst, Virginia. Multiple works are represented in the US Department Of State Art Bank Collection, Washington D.C., and numerous private collections.

A solo exhibition opening in November 2022 is the inaugural show of Susan Eley Fine Art’s new location in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In January 2023, a two-person exhibition of new paintings paired with painter Mike Childs will open at Susan Eley Fine Art, Hudson, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Future Memory at Galeria Ana Serratosa; Valencia, Spain (2021-22). Two-person exhibitions include Space Deconstructed at Susan Eley Fine Art, Hudson, NY (2021); A Sense Of Place at Susan Eley Fine Art, New York, NY (2019). Recent group exhibitions include Homegrown at Hauser & Wirth, New York, NY (2020); Friends From Social Media at Thomas Deans Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia (2019).

James Isherwood was born in 1971 in Fall River, Massachusetts. Currently, Isherwood lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

It could be argued that cave walls were the canvases for the world’s first landscape paintings, which depict and elevate natural scenery through art, but there is a richer history to consider.

The Netherlands was home to landscapes as a major theme in painting as early as the 1500s, and ink-on-silk paintings in China featured mountains and large bodies of water as far back as the third century. Greeks created vast wall paintings that depicted landscapes and grandiose garden scenes, while in the late 15th century and early 16th century, landscapes were increasingly the subject of watercolor works by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolomeo.

The popularity of religious paintings eventually declined altogether, and by the early 19th century, painters of classical landscapes took to painting out-of-doors (plein-air painting). Paintings of natural scenery were increasingly realistic but romanticized too. Into the 20th century, landscapes remained a major theme for many artists, and while the term “landscape painting” may call to mind images of lush, grassy fields and open seascapes, the genre is characterized by more variety, colors and diverse styles than you may think. Painters working in the photorealist style of landscape painting, for example, seek to create works so lifelike that you may confuse their paint for camera pixels. But if you’re shopping for art to outfit an important room, the work needs to be something with a bit of gravitas (and the right frame is important, too).

Adding a landscape painting to your home can introduce peace and serenity within the confines of your own space. (Some may think of it as an aspirational window of sorts rather than a canvas.) Abstract landscape paintings by the likes of Korean painter Seungyoon Choi or Georgia-based artist Katherine Sandoz, on the other hand, bring pops of color and movement into a room. These landscapes refuse to serve as a background. Elsewhere, Adam Straus’s technology-inspired paintings highlight how our extreme involvement with our devices has removed us from the glory of the world around us. Influenced by modern life and steeped in social commentary, Straus’s landscape paintings make us see our surroundings anew.

Whether you’re seeking works by the world’s most notable names or those authored by underground legends, find a vast collection of landscape paintings on 1stDibs.