About the Artist James A. Levine
James A. Levine has been drawing and painting since he was 5 or 6 years old. He just turned 73 and has continued drawing, painting, and creating his whole life. In the nearly 70-year timespan, he has created a lot of art. While he doesn’t have all the art he’s ever made, he has kept many art pieces.
When he was young, his mother asked him to date his artwork, so to this day, each piece he creates has his name and the year he made it written on the bottom.
James’ mother, Annette, passed away in 2009. She was James’ confidant and caretaker. James has autism and an intellectual disability, though he can live mostly independently. He worked at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center for over 30 years and just recently retired.
When James started making art, he drew with pencils and crayons. He also fingerpainted. These days, James still starts all his drawings with a pencil. He likes to sketch a scene first, then add color, and then outline it again in pencil and ink or sometimes a black marker. He still uses crayons, but also colored pencils, markers, watercolor paint, and acrylic paint. His art often depicts a room with a window facing outside.
“I like to draw out of my memory, places I’ve seen and scenery mostly. I find drawing interesting and relaxing,” says James.
James also explains that his drawing is sentimental.
“I like to draw a memory of some things that I miss. I’ve drawn a view of my house growing up and some other houses I visited, way back,” says James.
As for the people depicted in his pictures, James says he makes them up. Dogs appear in some of his scenes too, and James said he did have a dog growing up: a little, white French poodle named Filly. He also likes to walk around his neighborhood, where he often encounters dogs. Dogs come to visit the building he lives in, too; James is now in a retirement community.
Palm trees appear in several of James’ art pieces too. James spends winters in Florida, but he says he has seen palm trees on other trips and on TV, of course. One show he watches often is “Golden Girls.”
“They have palm trees and plenty of green outside on Golden Girls,” says James.
Two particularly striking aspects of James’ artwork is his mixture of patterns and the layering of the scenes he creates. There is often a well-drawn-out room with a meticulous window frame, and then a spectacular scene of blooming flowers, trees, or birds flying by. The level of detail is incredible.
When asked about his pattern-mixing, he talks about the stripes on long-sleeved shirts. He also mentions drawing patterns with hearts and stars. What James seems to be saying, is that like most artists, he draws inspiration from many places.
James has a much-beloved artwork that he created when he was 11 or 12. It is a small ear floating in a sea of red and pink. When James was younger, he was prone to earaches, and this drawing depicts how they felt.
“I had my last one when I was 14 years old. I used a red and pink crayon to show, it hurts, it hurts,” says James. “Also, the ear is like half a moon shining.”
When I go back and look at the picture, I see immediately what James means. The ear does look like a half-moon shining in a scribble of pink and red ache, much like an angry sky.
James will be donating all the sales of his artwork to Can Do Canines, a nonprofit that provides assistance dogs to people with disabilities, free of charge.