Artwork
The Game
Artist
Terrell James
(American, born 1955)
DepartmentContemporary Art
Date2015
MediumAcrylic on canvas
Dimensions66 × 66 in. (167.6 × 167.6 cm)
Credit LineSan Antonio Museum of Art, purchased with the Brown Foundation Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund
Object number2018.3
Copyright© Terrell James
DescriptionAbstract, gestural composition in rich hues of blue, green, and gray with touches of pink, purple, peach, and brown. The application of paint varies from flat or gestural passages of color to calligraphic lines.Label TextEliciting a sense of a landscape and geology, this gestural abstract painting is based on close observations of nature and over 800 Field Studies, a series of drawings Terrell James has created since 1997. Named for the color notations made outdoors by nineteenth-century landscape painters to assure fidelity to nature when completing works in the studio, James’s Field Studies allow her to explore open-ended interactions of color and form. In The Game, James uses various sized brushes, custom-formulated pigments of different thickness, and oil stick to create a composition whose lyrical line, patches, and fluid areas of color call to mind the fluidity of watercolor. Instead of figurative images and visual stability, the viewer finds a “landscape” composed of alternate readings, change, and movement—the act of painting itself. James has said: "I am interested in the viewer's participation in my work. There is the work, then there is something that happens between the viewer and the painting: a sort of second painting.”
(Suzanne Weaver, 2018)Published ReferencesBarbara Ras and Terrell James, You Can't Have It All (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2025). (illus.)Not on view
Collections
Alma Nungarrayi Granites
Culture: Aboriginal Australians (Warlpiri language group)
2007
The San Antonio Museum of Art is in the process of digitizing its permanent collection. This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect SAMA's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.
This resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
