James Mullen was born and raised in the rural environment of western New Jersey. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Sculpture and Printmaking from the University of New Hampshire in 1985, participated in the LaNapoule Summer Art Program in 1986, and completed his Master of Fine Arts in Painting at Indiana University in 1991.
Mullen has taught at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, the University of Evansville in Indiana, and since 1999, has been a Professor in the Department of Art at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME. He has received numerous awards and scholarships, including an Individual Artist Grant from the state of Georgia and Research Grants from both the University of Evansville and Bowdoin College.
He has had over twenty solo exhibitions at venues such as the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art in Augusta, GA, The Chattahoochee Valley Art Museum in LaGrange, GA, Artemisia Gallery in Chicago, IL, The Maine Center for Contemporary Art in Rockport, ME, and Providence College in Rhode Island. Mullen has also had several solo exhibitions at the Ruschman Art Gallery in Indianapolis, IN, and at Sherry French Gallery in New York City. He has been awarded residencies at the Spring Island Artist in Residence program in South Carolina, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, IL, the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, and Hewnoaks Artist Colony.
In 2015, he was awarded a Puffin Foundation Grant for the Pilgrimage Project. Recent solo exhibitions include Phoenix Gallery in New York City, University of Southern New Hampshire, Locust Grove Estate in Poughkeepsie, NY, the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, ME, and the Barrington Center for the Arts at Gordon College in Wenham, MA.