The one word that defines Jim's life of creativity is “Experimental”. He gets ideas in his head and has to try them out. Nothing tells him “This has to be done That way, and That has to be done This way”.

The Layered Painting series began with an idea on how Jim could express dance and movement in a new way. The idea was to put varying positions of a dance on top of each other. Jim first tried sketching on paper. That didn’t work. The aha moment was to layer slightly changed positions on top of each other with a space between them. But how to do that? That initial dance experiment wasn’t very successful but it opened up a world of possibilities using the “Three Dimensional Effect”.

Jim started to paint on plexiglass, using the shadowbox frames and spacers to separate the sheets of plexus and create a dimensional aspect to the art. He then went on to explore the technique with various subjects, painting realistic, abstract, architectural, people, a nude, a portrait and even a sports piece. He eventually entered one into a juried show that took the honorable mention second place.

With each piece he discovered something new, both in the result and in the execution. The cool ability to see underneath layers and behind things. Jim had to learn how to “de-paint” or take paint off so that you could see the paintings beneath better.

This experimentation led to some of the pointillist pieces we had on display. 

Another by-product of experimentation are the small paintings Jim does on gemstones. This merges Jim's love for polished gemstones and his creative mind. As Jim describes, he doesn't have to make up the painting, he simply looks at the gemstone and draws out the natural scene his mind views in the stone, This allows us to peer into his mind's eye and learn more about his vision and creativity.