James Cicatko

James Cicatko was born in 1962 in Cleveland, OH. He attended undergraduate school at VCU, in Richmond, VA, receiving a BFA in painting and printmaking in 1985. He later went on to get his MFA in studio art from UNC Chapel Hill in 2003. James has exhibited throughout the country and internationally. He’s been living in Seattle since 1990.

James received a 2013 GAP to assist with expenses such as paper and framing to further his series of drawings, Conversations with Messerschmidt, inpired by the work of Baroque sculptor Franz Messerschmidt.

James received a 2004 GAP to help defray material costs related to the completion of two complimentary series of paintings, Studies with Heads and Little Monsters. Studies is a gestural, largely improvised series depicting human heads and resulting in large-scale pieces. Conversely, Little Monsters is a series of tightly constructed, highly worked, and built up paintings. Together, the two series “act as an effective foil to one another and are mutually refreshing as a kind of doubling effect.”