James DeWoody

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James DeWoody, born May 31, 1945, in Fort Smith, Arkansas, is an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor who has lived in New York City since 1972. He grew up in Texarkana, Texas, and earned a BA in English and Studio Art from Tulane University in 1967. He received an MFA from Pratt Institute in 1975 in painting, new forms, and art history.

DeWoody teaches at the New York Institute of Technology in New York City and has previously taught at New York University and the Philadelphia College of Art. He works in acrylic on canvas and paper, makes prints using pochoir and screened monoprints, and creates sculptures largely in fabricated and painted steel.

His art has evolved over the years. He began with figurative work, became fully abstract in the 1970s with torn-paper collages that had a sculptural feel, and created abstract towers and zigzags. He returned to figurative subjects in the 1980s and has worked in several series, including “heroic” portraits of athletes and buildings, often using hard-edged pochoir. Later he moved to screened monoprints for portraits titled “Perps,” “Babes,” and Asians. More recently, he has used Asian-made objects like Japanese porcelain figures and Chinese plastic toys in conversation tableaux.

DeWoody collaborates with master printer Roni Henning and is mentioned in her book on water-based screenprinting. He has designed theatre sets, illustrated books, painted fourteen Stations of the Cross for a Manhattan church, and designed a fountain and gateway at the Federal Courthouse in Texarkana. His large work B’way Boog (11 by 8 feet) hangs in the lobby of 1675 Broadway in New York, and his public sculpture Big Zig is installed at 60 Henry Street in Manhattan.

His artwork is in major collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress, the Whitney Museum, the Parrish Art Museum, and time Warner, among others. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States, and his work has been reviewed in major publications. He was married to Beth Rudin DeWoody; they divorced and have two children, Carlton (also an artist) and Kyle (who runs an art boutique in Manhattan).