James Mullen is an accomplished artist whose paintings center around the landscape. Born and raised in western New Jersey, he obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus on Sculpture and Printmaking from the University of New Hampshire in 1985, and his Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Indiana University in 1991. Mullen 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.
Mullen has had over twenty solo exhibitions at various venues across the United States, including the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art in Augusta, GA, Artemisia Gallery in Chicago, IL, and the Maine Center for Contemporary Art in Rockport, ME. He has also been awarded residencies at various artist retreats, such as the Spring Island Artist in Residence program in South Carolina, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, IL.
In recent years, Mullen has refined his focus to examine iconic sites belonging to the lexicon of the 19th-century American landscape. He spends extended time at these locations in an effort to engage with them more mindfully, creating work that reminds viewers of the importance of a more thoughtful connection with the environment. Mullen says, “All of these sites have been understood primarily through reliance upon mechanical reproduction… This new body of work seeks to visit a number of these sites, and treat them as primary documents to research and develop.”
Mullen’s recent solo exhibitions have been held at various institutions, including Phoenix Gallery in New York City, New England College in Henniker, NH, University of Southern New Hampshire, and the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, ME. His work is a continuation of a body of work that he has been building over the last two decades dealing with the depictions of the environment. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME.