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"James Jack is an American who, as a child growing up in Manhattan, whose best friend from kindergarten was from Japan. Later he went to Kyoto and studied with a master calligrapher. Back in Vermont he created his own indigenous 'American' ink from Butternuts and Walnuts. He explores the gestural, 'action painting' and ink qualities & character found in Asian calligraphy and Abstract Expressionism. He keeps to Hsieh Ho's six principles of art written in the 6th Century, the first is art must manifest Life Force, the life impulse of the artist/maker in the immediacy of Now. This is the other side of the coin, not an Asian American but an American Asian story. Attracted to an artistic life of contemplation and meditation, James follows in an American tradition that includes many contemporary artists, as well as the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, naturalist Henry David Thoreau, the Hudson River School of landscape painting, the art of the Northwest exemplified by Morris Graves and Mark Tobey, and the pottery of Bernard Leach. This can be said to be an American trend of thought for whom Nature is a friend, deeply mysterious yet intimate, without impulse to exploit, conquer or fear."
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