Christine James weaves the public language of science and her own relationship with the environment into the language of painting.  She engages with nature in a very personal and immediate sense, taking time to absorb the language and “feel” of the landscape before committing it to paper or canvas.  In particular, the paintings that are inspired by over a decade spent researching, walking and sketching the country around Weereewa/Lake share much with us about the antiquity and complexity of this landscape.  Christine’s previous works in the area were located in a post-colonial perspective, however she now believes that it is important as a contemporary artist to honour the work of active and passionate conservationists.  Christine has developed a series of small intimately worked paintings whose locus is the colonial genre of landscape.  They are not embellished with social narrative or abstracted in any way, rather the painting process seeks to honour the uniquely indigenous features of this ancient land.

Christine James earned a Graduate Diploma in painting from the Australian National University Institute of The Arts in 1994, after which she travelled  to France, Germany, England, USA and extensively in India.  She has featured in over a dozen solo and group exhibitions since 1996 including her solo
exhibition ‘Cooloola’ at the Canberra Museum and Gallery in 2004.  Her work is represented in many public collections including Artbank, United Nations Centre for Human Settlement, Harare, ANU Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies and Parliament House.