Merlin James

Merlin James (b. 1960, Cardiff, UK) lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland.

One of the most influential British painters working today, Merlin James is known for making seemingly heterogenous, modestly-scaled paintings, which depict everything from vernacular architecture to post-industrial landscapes to haunted littoral spaces to empty interiors to scenes of sexual intimacy. What he makes is indivisible from the way he makes it, starting from how the basic stretcher is put together, to the kinds of ‘support’ used, and the materials applied. These are liable to feature – in addition to paint – such things as human hair, ash and sawdust from the artist’s studio floor. The work is characterized by an inexhaustible sense of invention and a synthesis of James’ expansive engagement with the history of western painting, both as an artist and as a critic. He actively perceives art history not as a linear progression but rather as an amalgamation of subjects and objects, supports and marks, styles, genres and imageries, typified as much by omissions and aberrations as by monolithic coherence. His methodology is closer to excavation than construction, the paintings often feeling more discovered or revealed than necessarily built up and cumulative, even if James is paradoxically doing both things at once.

Recent solo exhibitions include Hobby Horse, Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York, 2025; Maureen Paley, London, UK, 2024; Some Steps, Kunstsaele, Berlin, 2023; Arrival, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023; Merlin James: Piers and Other Structures, 20 Albert Road, Glasgow, 2023; Far and Near, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, 2022; Window, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, 2021; Merlin James, P420, Bologna, 2020; and River, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, 2020.

Recent group exhibitions include 15 years, P420, Bologna, IT., 2025; Elegy, As It Stands, Los Angeles, CA, 2025; Magicians less prone to mental disorders than other artists, finds research, Altman Siegel, San Francisco, 2024; Voyage, Morena di Luna, Hove, 2024; light the light at the beginning of the world, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, 2024; Double Shuffle, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, 2023; Landschaft, Galerie Khoshbakht, Cologne, 2023; I MET, Spazio Mutina, Fiorano, 2023'; I’ve never met anyone quite like you before, Queens Park Railway Club, Glasgow, 2023; To be a giant and keep quiet about it, Margot Samel, New York, 2022; Moderato Cantabile, Stoppenbach & Delestre, London, 2022; Gracie DeVito/Gabriel de la Mora/Merlin James, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, 2022; Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London, 2021; Prunella Clough, A small thing edgily, June, Berlin, 2021; Feel the Soul?, Willumsens Museum, Frederikssund, 2021; Double-M, Double-X, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, 2020; and Slow Painting, The Levinsky Gallery, Plymouth, 2020. 

James' work can be found in the following collections: Arts Council England, UK; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, US; Boxes Museum, Shunde, CN; British Council, UK; Brooklyn Museum, US; The Bunker Artspace, Miami, Florida, US; Colby Art Museum, Maine, US; Dallas Museum of Art, US; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, NO; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, FR; National Museum of Wales, UK; HUA Art Museum, Shenzhen, CN; San Antonio Art Museum, US; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, US; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, CN; and Tate, London, UK.