| James Billmyer, born in Union Bridge, Maryland, received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Western Maryland College which was followed by study at the National Academy of Design; Beaux Arts; the Art Students' League; Cooper Union; Maryland Institute, Baltimore; Charcoal Club, Baltimore; and Grand Central School of Art. His teachers in these studio classrooms were John Sloan, George Luks, Frank Vincent Dumond, George Bridgeman, William De Leftwich Dodge, Dean Cornwell and Harvey Dunn. He was then involved with the commercial art of periodicals and advertising, working as an illustrator for such magazines as Collier's, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, Ladies Home Journal, Parents Magazine, House and Garden, etc. In 1931 he became a member of the American Society of Illustrators. James Billmyer travelled extensively: in Latin and South America, Canada, the Near East and Europe, exploring both the historical and contemporary evidences of the continuity in the arts. During a period of twelve years, he was devoted to the study of plastic organization under Hans Hofmann in New York and Provincetown. James Billmyer taught and lectured at the New York School of Interior Design; the Hudson River School; his own New York School; the Naskeag School, Maine; Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia; and the Miami Art Center. |
| James Billmyer made the following statements:
"A picture has to be a living, breathing thing. Hofmann has maned it push-pull. To get this vitality, one has to study relationships and study them intensively. By the study of relationships, which is an inexhaustible study, one becomes more aware of himself in relation to the cosmos. After all, that is the subject of ones creation anyway, regardless of whether that creation is realistic, abstract, surrealistic or non-objective. It is for this reason that every well-educated person should be able to read pictures. This involves more than a matter of good taste, more than the ability to read literary meanings, more than superficial surface meanings. It means reading the picture as a self-contained spiritual entity. One has to develop ones sensibilities. Ones vision changes little by little. This kind of seeing is not just a figure of God; it takes work. If one can really see a Michaelangelo, a Rembrandt or a Renoir, one will be able to read the work of the Great Modern Painters, who paint universals in terms of their own day. It is all logical- not a practical logic, but an esthetic logic. And to quote Picasso-"It all comes about through having a sun in your belly." After all, we've gone far ahead in science, medicine, physics, mathematics, etc. Should art be far behind? Isn't art always the forerunner of cultural advance?" Regarding Plastic Realization, James Billmyer further stated: "The aim of the Artist is to organize his visual experience into esthetic form. A work becomes plastic when this form is realized as a complete emotional-intellectual synthesis. Its plastic realization is its content. A plastic statement does not necessarily exclude the pictorial realization of objects. The work, however, is reduced to illustration only when the plastic statement is destroyed. Finally the universality of visual art expresses itself through its plastic realization." |
