James Somerville Lindsay

Born in Scone in Perthshire in 1954, James studied at Glasgow School of Art between 1972 and 1978 (a DA in Graphic Design), with a gap year in the south coast of England and a year at Portsmouth College of Art and Design. He then enjoyed a long and successful career in Advertising and Design before deciding to focus on his lifelong passion for painting in the 1990s and became a full time artist for the first time in 2010.

James's work draws its inspiration from the great impressionist masters. Little wonder then, that his early years as an artist were spent following in their footsteps through the South of France.
On the road in his old campervan, painting en plein air, he developed the loose expressive style that he is now renowned for. He continued to work between his homes and studios both in the Minervois near Carcassonne in France and Scotland, before returning to his home country full time in 2017.

Travel, adventure and new stimulus are key to his work and he continues to paint Mediterranean scenes whilst also gaining a growing reputation for cityscape work throughout the UK.

Equally at home working on location as in a studio environment, James paints in oils, often in short time frames on ten to twenty pieces simultaneously. Working in these short bursts on each piece allows him to retain a loose, expressive quality to his compositions, capturing the fleeting moments of light and shadow that render the ordinary extraordinary.