Terrell James | Revelers, 2017

Hello, my name is Terrell James. I'm very pleased to be part of the collection of art from Texas that helps define The Lancaster Hotel. Not only am I from Houston, but my uncle's father, Warren S. Bellows, Sr. built the hotel which was then known as the Auditorium Hotel in the 1920s, about a century ago. And across the street, I can remember seeing the slab being poured over several days for Jones Hall with Uncle Warren bringing all of us children to see this monumental effort. Also, Bellows Construction built the Alley Theatre directly to the west of The Lancaster. I think even in my childhood I understood what an important corner and part of downtown Houston this was to the cultural history and the cultural engagement of the city. My work proceeds from a sense of place and the broader themes of the natural world and my observation of it. Often my paintings and drawings evoke landscape while rarely depicting recognizable things like fields or clouds. Sometimes a viewer may sense falling into the piece or feel a surprising shift in scale or point of view. It may be from the ground and then from above, as a bird might see the painted plane below. For me, the lobby painting Revelers involves a sense of interplay between characters carrying on together as in a festive crowd. When I look at Revelers, I see energetic play between white patches that might be stones and clouds. As contradictory as that may sound, they push and taunt their way into elongated garnet and red umber shapes that seem like passages and walkways seen from above. There's that bird's eye view again. A dirty butter yellow and ochre mustard passage weave in and out of these shapes balanced by lines of violet and patches of mint greens and grays. Can you imagine conversation, even chimes of welcome as they shape each other and greet as in a gathering here? Kind of like what happens naturally when friends find each other in a lobby. I started painting in oil at a very young age, at ten and drawing as soon as I could hold a pencil. This gave me an immense sense of power as a tiny person. Unlike many of my childhood friends, I had an idea of my future direction. I was an artist. I've been working ever since and love paint in the physical act of making a mark on paper or on a copper etching plate, or in wax to be cast or on linen with paint. The vocabulary of my visual language continues to grow and evolve.