James Lancel McElhinney is a visual artist, author, oral historian, and fine-press publisher. He is the recipient of a Pollock Krasner 2017 artist-grant. McElhinney attended Tyler School of Art (MFA Painting), Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Yale University (MFA Painting). He has received numerous honor including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. McElhinney is also a published author who has conducted numerous oral histories and interviews for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, the Frick Center for the History of Collecting, Columbia University INCITE for the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Center for Southern Jewish Culture, Vermont Studio Center, VoCA, Voices in Contemporary Art, other foundations and private patrons. McElhinney is listed on the Master Artist Council of the Arthur Miller Foundation.
VISUAL ARTIST
From 1991 to 2003, McElhinney created a series of artworks exploring historic battlefields as flash-points in new conflicts between historic preservation and commercial development. Since 2005, painting in book-form has afforded McElhinney greater mobility. Identifying with traveler-artists such as John-James Audubon, George Catlin, Seth Eastman, and William Guy Wall, McElhinney regards his paintings as interventions, encountering the landschaft as a palimpsest of simultaneous narratives; terrain organized by memory and desire; conditioned by topography, climate and other natural processes.
From 2003 to the Present, McElhinney shifted his painting practice from Eurocentric substrates such as canvas, to the pages of books. Inspired by historic expeditionary artists, the Hokusai Manga, and other non-western book illuminators, McElhinney has become an advocate of deeper engagement with nature through drawing and writing, in ways that promote environmental awareness, historical knowledge and ecological civics. His sketchbook paintings are sometimes reiterated in the form of monoprints, intaglio prints, and fine press limited editions.
AUTHOR
McElhinney is the author of the Sketchbook Traveler trilogy from Schiffer Publishing, 2020-2022. Previous books include Art Students League of New York on Painting, Ten Speed Press, 2015; The Visual Language of Drawing, Sterling Publishing 2012, and Classical Life Drawing Studio, Sterling Publishing 2010. Other published writings include essays and reviews for American Arts Quarterly, Fine Art Connoisseur, Hudson River Valley Review, New Art Examiner, Orientations, Urban Glass, and the U.S. Capitol Historical Society journal The Capitol Dome.
PUBLISHER
In 2017 McElhinney established Needlewatcher Editions. Following the subscription model, the small press produced four fine press limited edition suites of intaglio & archival pigment prints that have been acquired by museums and rare-book libraries across the country.
One of these, O.T.W. The Schuylkill River, was the centerpiece of an installation organized by McElhinney for Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, which opened October 24, 2018 and continued through January 5, 2020. His work was also the focus of James McElhinney: Discover the Hudson Anew, at the Hudson River Museum from September 13, 2019 to February 16, 2020. McElhinney is represented by Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe. His books and limited editions are presented by Peters Projects, and Lux Mentis Booksellers. His work is represented in Denver, Colorado by William Havu Gallery.
Public Collections:
Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, North Carolina
Avery Fine Art and Architecture Library, Columbia University. New York, New York
Boscobel House and Gardens, Garrison, New York
Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia
City of Philadelphia. Water Department Archives.
Danville Museum of Fine Art and History, Danville, Virginia
Denver Art Museum. Institute for Western Art. Denver Colorado
University of Denver. Library Special Collections. Denver Colorado
Free Library of Philadelphia. Print and Picture Collection
Greenville Museum of Art, Greenville, North Carolina
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers New York
Huntington Library and Museum, San Marino, California
Medical College of Virginia. Art Collection. Richmond, Virginia
Museum of the Southwest. Midland, Texas.
Newberry Library. Chicago, Illinois
New York Public Library. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photography
Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education. Portland, Main
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Archives and Special Collections S
Swarthmore College, Swarthmore PA
Temple University. Samuel L. Paley Library Special Collections
West Point Museum, United States Military Academy
Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. New Haven Connecticut”>Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia
Other Professional Activity
CONSULTANT
McElhinney is a skilled communicator engaged with the world of art, museums, environmentalism and historic preservation. He is the owner of Needlewatcher LLC, a bonded New York State Limited Liability Company ,offering consulting services related to fine arts, artist estates, historical and technical expertise to the motion picture industry. He is a candidate member of the Appraisers Association of America, and is current with USPAP. USPAP (Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice)
PUBLIC SPEAKER/PERFORMER
Venues include: Chrysler Museum, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, Greenwich Art Society, Harpers Ferry National Historic Site (and other NPS locations), Hudson River Valley Institute, Independence Seaport Museum, Hudson River Museum, John Burroughs Association, Museum of Modern Art, National Academy of Design School,) New-York Historical Society, Olana State Historic Site (and other New York State venues), Thomas Cole National Historic Site, University of Iowa School of Art, Yale School of Art. McElhinney also appears in a speaking role in the film She Came to Me, directed by Rebecca Miller (2022).
MEMBERSHIPS
Armor and Arms Club of New York, Audubon Society, Ecoartspace, Fine Press Book Association, Company of Military Historians, John Burroughs Association, Nature Conservancy, New York State Parks & Trails Association, Sons of the American Revolution, Yale Club of New York
McElhinney’s biography has been published in Marquis Who’s Who in America. McElhinney lives in the Champlain Valley and Manhattan with his wife; art historian, author and curator Dr. Katherine E. Manthorne, noted scholar of art of the United States and Latin America and Full Professor in the Doctoral program in Art History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Contact: PO Box 233. Essex. New York. 12836-0233
Email: james@mcelhinneyart.com
Websites: www.mcelhinneyart.com,
Follow him on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Instagram,
Current CV (Highlights)
Web Design by Graham White. Digital Media Design. graham.white@gwhite.us
James McElhinney along the headwaters of the Hudson River in Newcomb, New York