RESUME

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS


GROUP

2009 Vision Unfolds: 60 Years of Art, Juried Group Show, Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, CA
2009 Centralism, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA
2010 Gallery 25 Group Show, Fresno City Hall, Fresno, CA
2010 [5]Art Gallery, Gallery 25 Exchange Show, {5}Art Gallery, Tampa, FL
2011 The Grand Art Auction Exhibition, Millenium Hotel, Abu Dhabi,  United Arab Emirates
2010 Gallery 25 Group Show, Fresno, CA
2010 Centralism, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA
2012 Obsessions, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA
2012 The Hot Show, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA
2012 Centralism, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA
2012 Hearts, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA
2012 Transparency, Chris Sorenson Gallery, Fresno, CA
2012 Winter Group, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA
2013 C'est Bon, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA
2014 Then/now, Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, CA
2015 Some Alum, 1821 Gallery & Studios, Fresno, CA

SOLO 

2010 Footprint, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA
2011 Unfinished Business, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA
2012 Lost @ Sea, 1821 Gallery, Fresno, CA
2014 Toggle, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA 
2015 Inconsequentialism, Gallery 25, Fresno, CA  
2018 Yardwork, Figtree Gallery, Fresno, CA
2020 Making Marks, Figtree Gallery, Fresno, CA



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EDUCATION

Taft Community College, Associate of Arts Degree 
California State University Fresno B. A. Degree

REVIEW

Lost @ Sea, A show by Fresno artist, Jim Campbell

By Aaron Collins for Fresno Magazine

Contemporary art gets criticized for having become to insider or elitist to offer much relevance or impact to mainstream culture. But Fresno artist Jim Campbell’s paintings chart the opposite course in his recent show, “Lost @ Sea” at Fresno’s 1821 Gallery.

Campbell’s work in “Lost @ Sea” speaks ambivalently but unequivocally to a beleaguered world abused by big oil and awash in corporate-manufactured PR illusions that threaten to obscure petrochemical impacts on body, soul and surroundings. Part of a larger body of work he calls the “Carbon Series”, Campbell’s works might be topical to the point of political tract but for his penchant for surrealistic poetry.

Most artist’s desire to impact the world. But that is often a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t prospect: Art that’s too specifically didactic will alienate viewers or reduce the work of art to a one-dimensional partisan screed. Too ambiguous and an artist risks abandoning honesty and conviction – a too-cool-for-school hipsterism detached from sincere concern about anything, or the convenient hedging of market-driven blue chip art that seeks to avoid offense in high stakes corporate surroundings or the high-profile private collection.

Campbell wades right in, avoiding didacticism by matching surreal and nightmarish historical oil spill scenarios like BP’s massive Gulf disaster with surrealism’s gambits. Considering that epic debacle, Campbell’s paintings might be considered quite muted and pleasant, appearing less as screeds and more as a gently reflected dystopia whose primary question seems to be, are we too far gone?

“When doing topical work like the ‘Carbon Series’ I try to approach the subject of fossil fuel use and its consequences as a cautionary tale rather than as a teaching or proselytizing exercise, says Campbell, who is a retired Fresno Unified elementary school teacher. “I also softened the message of degradation caused by [oil] use by making the paintings easy to look at – or at least I hope they are.”

In addition to having current events and their facts on his side, he also succeeds by couching his imagery in art historical allusion, perhaps the primary saving grace that avoids the usual pitfalls of political art becoming broadsides or mere political cartoons in lesser hands. Georgia O’Keefe, Wayne Thiebaud and the mapping elements of Australian Aboriginal art make appearances, as do elements of Sheeler and early 20th century American representational art known as Precisionism, with which Campbell poses the fragile human machine against environmental perils in what appears to be an unfair matchup.

“I view myself as being an intuitive painter rather than an intellectual, conceptual one, but when I’m painting in my studio, the goal is to make work that looks like mine and not someone else’s. So, I attempt to not let all the other artists that I like take over my compositions”, Campbell says. “I use certain techniques that I’ve seen in other artist’s work such as the halos of different colors that surround the objects in Wayne Thiebaud’s work. But I use it more like pin striping , which is maybe from coming of age in the 1960’s and 70’s when California car culture was an influence on a lot of work being done in L.A.”

Campbell is a 42-year Fresno resident and graduate of Fresno State, where he studied with art professors Dal Henderson and Terry Allen before switching to an education major.

Interview

Interview posted on ValleyPBS of a show titled "Toggle" at Gallery 25 that ran from 5/1/2014 - 6/1/2014: http://video.valleypbs.org/video/2365252381/