James Richards is a Black American painter who was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 1981.

 

Richards’ most recent work represents an ongoing discourse with gender, sexuality and alienation and explores the universal sufferings of aging, sickness and death.

 

 

As a young artist, Richards was moved by the Black American writer Ralph Ellison’s seminal work “Invisible Man” (1952) and the meditations of Tillie Olsen, whose text “Silences” (1978) gave voice to the unseen art and talent of working-class people. Their words encouraged him, an invisible Black artist from West Philadelphia, to make art undeterred by obstacles and elusive recognition. 

 

 

Richards’ artwork over the decades has examined autobiographical and social narratives that have consisted in part of paintings and mixed media collages.

 

 

Some of that work has depicted voyeuristic and stage-like scenes that invite the viewer into deeply intimate sexually-charged paintings with a focus on subjects who appear simultaneously aloof and self conscious. His past work has also drawn from scenes of Black family life and tradition, often signaling underlying tension through ordinary figures who have remained largely "invisible" in the imagery of American art. 

 

 

After he was formally diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in 2007 and began using a wheelchair, Richards struggled to work nimbly at a large scale, but his illness and its impact on his physical strength has informed much of his exploration of life and death, masculinity and social isolation.

 

 

As a former educator, Richards also proudly dedicated nearly 30 years to nurturing creativity in young people as a middle and high school art teacher at Sewickley Academy in Pennsylvania and the United Nations International School in New York before his retirement in 2019. 

 

 

Richards has exhibited at galleries in major cities in the United States including New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore at the Kenkeleba House (1982), Franklin Furnace (1983), Just Above Midtown Downtown (1983), Artist Space (1985), among others.

 

 

Richards lives and works in New York. He is a practicing SGI Nichiren Buddhist and the father of four adult children.