Artist Bio
I'm James Honeycutt, an oil painter based in San Diego, California. I work in oil and cold wax on wood panel, painting landscapes, seascapes, and coastlines with a focus on texture, atmosphere, and the liminal, emotional weight of places that feel charged with something just beyond words.
I came to painting late... in 2023, at 57, standing in front of Georgia O'Keeffe's work at the San Diego Museum of Art. The recognition that washed over me wasn't that I wanted to paint. It was that I already was a painter, and always had been. I left the museum and started the next day.
I spent two years in relentless experimentation, painting over 200 works across multiple media. In 2025 I found my medium: oil and cold wax on panel, worked in thick impasto, pulling and pushing paint until the surface holds its own light. I paint from places that stop me in my tracks... the California coastline, the streets of cities I've loved, the strange geometry of things most people walk past without looking.
My work lives at the edge of representation. I push subjects toward abstraction until the viewer has to slow down, look carefully, and find the image themselves. That moment of discovery — the catch, the quiet recognition — is the thing I'm always after.
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