Gigi James

Gigi James lives and works in the English countryside near Oxford. Her work explores colour, form, and emotive mark-making through layers of opaque and translucent paint. Influenced by flowers, landscapes, design and architecture, her paintings balance fluidity with spontaneity, often drawing inspiration from the vibrant hues and textures of nature. Creativity has been central to Gigi’s life from an early age through drawing, painting, and illustration. After studying art and textiles at school, she went on to complete a degree in fashion followed by postgraduate studies in interior design. A career in interiors shaped her understanding of colour, composition, texture, and space, all of which continue to inform her artistic practice today. Gigi returned to painting after the birth of her daughter during Covid, gradually developing a more focused and intuitive visual language. Her process is layered and evolving; paintings are revisited over days, weeks, and sometimes months, with marks and details continuously added, removed, and reworked until the composition feels complete or, as she describes it, “perfectly unbalanced.” Painting is both instinctive and emotional for Gigi, bringing moments of freedom, frustration, discovery, and ultimately satisfaction as each work slowly reveals itself.