James Little: Homecoming: The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN

Dixon Gallery and Gardens present  sixteen gallery spaces with independent, Dixon-organized exhibitions, featuring the exhibition James Little: Homecoming. 

 For more than four decades, James Litle has grappled with the history of abstract painting through his bold, geometric compositions. His canvases display controlled brushwork interest in the physical properties of paint and the influence of color field painting and gestural abstraction while conveying a strong feeling for color, surface, and texture.

Born and raised in Memphis, Littles's interest in art was evident from a young age when he copied comic strips and reproductions of the paintings he saw in books his mother brought home from the library. Later, as a student at Memphis Academy of Arts (later Memphis College of Arts), he first began to explore the abstract style that would come to define his career. While completing an MEA at Syracuse University, seminars with Clement Greenberg and Harold Kramer, among the most prominent critics of the era, allowed him to explore the theoretical underpinnings of abstraction and situate his own work within the longer trajectory of modern art.

Although he has lived and worked in New York City since the mid-1970, Little's hometown roots still figure in his art. Homecoming is his first solo show in Memphis. He has described how deeply affected he was by the assassination of Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 and the subsequent protests that occurred while he was a student at Hamilton High School, declaring that the "scars of racism and discrimination" last forever. Though persistent in his pursuit of abstraction, Little alludes to a diverse range of current events and social issues in the tiles of his work, calling attention to concerns such as mass incarceration and settler colonialism as well as popular music and art historical references.

The works on view in Homecoming, produced between 2008 and 2020, realize a synthesis of multiple influences  that has only been possible through a long maturation process. Little has consistently worked with a non-objective tradition that emphasizes the integrity of materials, monumentality. color, and form. Constantly exploring the medium of paint, the artist's diverse, analytical paintings continue to present multifaceted ways of seeing the world.