Meet James Mathers

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?

I incarnated into Topanga in the 60s with its crazy mix of surf culture meets woo. My Mom was a total brainiac so I consumed whatever I found in the house – psychology textbooks plus some Dostoyevsky, Prokofiev, Gogol (a lot of Russian stuff oddly) I developed a healthy suspicion of Jungian analysis and psychiatry in general by the age of eight. My first exhibition occurred on the fridge door – to great acclaim from my Mom. A drawing of… I don’t recall, but I remember the feeling of Yes! And it is important to mention that I had a goat and an utterly brilliant dog with whom I shared my early years in total telepathic relationship.

I have lived so many lives and traveled all over the world and now find myself right back where I started in Topanga Canyon. I am currently continuing my ongoing creative rampage from a little stone cottage by the creek.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s been like butter. I’ve been on a 59-year-long rocket ride from perfect emptiness to perfect emptiness.

Seriously tho, it was challenging. My single Mom was overwhelmed – working, studying, and raising a hyperactive boy. I was into everything and highly motivated. So they medicated me with benzadrine at age six and then took me off with no warning about withdrawals six years later. It was a tough time, but making art was what granted me a sense of agency in the chaos. Art and multiple jobs. I was determined to be independent. Mom took me on a cross-country trip when I was 18, and I decided to stay in NY. I joined the Arts Student League, got some hours, and I was off and running. But running nightclubs in NY and LA, I soon totally burned out. Some friends shipped me to the wilds of Wicklow in Ireland; I lived in the valley of Laragh for a time painting for a show for Veith Turske in Switzerland. Ireland has always featured in my life – I found myself back there again years later, making a film about the pony kids of Dublin, urban cowboys, and casting bronze bells. I showed the bells and my blazing ballerinas at Anya von Gosselin’s gallery and curated the Garden of Delight bookstore there.

What’s a typical day for you?
I meditate at sunrise, hit my 7am AA meeting, and can be found most days at Mimosa Cafe by 9.30 if I’m not driving my daughter to school, a herculean effort navigating the traffic of HellLA. Mimosa Cafe is a great little French bakery run by the indefatigable Clare, who is up at dawn every day baking pastries. I write and drink coffee there and talk with my people, and play the odd game of chess with my daughter. I’m always drawing – Mimosa is the place to get your copy of Astral Projection, and if I’m there, I’ll sign it for ya! After that, I’ll head up the Canyon and visit with the folks at Corazon – we are always cooking up something – the next Drone music festival, a t-shirt for Radio Free Topanga – Pablo, my publisher at Brass Tacks Press, might swing by. After that, I’ll head over to visit Gidget at FlowerPower Topanga – we’ve been working on a cool, fun project – Other’s Day! Go ask her about it! I’m currently working on my next play so I’ll get my kimchi at the market and do some work on the play. At some point, I’ll walk on the beach and then spend the evening working on some larger paintings for my next painting show.

If I’m not in Topanga I’m hanging with my daughter – we like to go to book shops and record shops, thrift stores. Or I’m over at Norty’s studio Norton Wisdom, he’s my guru. I just love everything about him. We often work on a painting together, like our recent Swami Bunni mash-up. Recently his daughter Ireland Wisdom painted my daughter Luna’s portrait – that was something magical to observe.

I’ve discovered a newfound interest in cooking. My girlfriend is vegan so if I’m on the East Coast with her I like the challenge of cooking up something spesh for her. We went through a Brutalist phase recently, so Borscht seemed appropriate. We ate it for days on end. It was great. She’s from Ireland, so I’m endlessly reworking the potato. Which reminds me of some gold leaf gilded potato sculptures I made in Ireland a lifetime ago …

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Apparently, I am a playwright, poet, author of Children’s Guide to Astral Projection under Brasstacks Press have directed and written several films have had many, many painting and sculpture exhibitions. I’ve traveled and exhibited extensively in Europe, Asia, India, and South America. I am a producer rather than a consumer of so-called reality. I played hard in the international art scene for a lifetime, and I am at this stage exploring the made objects for talismanic purposes with an eye towards my own spiritual development.

In essence, I’m probably primarily a researcher – examining the expanded/contracted state and using painting, sculpting, and writing to do so. As a sober alcoholic, I have an urgency and fire under my ass to aggressively pursue my spirituality. I have a committed daily meditation practice and a committed daily AA meeting. I’m very interested in the state of the Soul and my soul in particular. I’m currently having a CS Lewis moment, and I’m always having a William Blake moment.

I’m interested in the theory of the bottleneck versus the brick wall. Like are we currently the gloop before the butterfly? Or the chrysalis about to be discarded? Last year I had a show at Lane Dyke’s gallery with Alexander Mihailovich and Elisa Rossi in NY called Eschaton, a theological term referring to ‘The Last Thing’. The Final Event in the Divine Plan, The End of the World, The Summary Event, Rapture, Ascension, Singularity, Shift – are we there? Are we hitting the brick wall? Or pushing through a bottleneck? My work is a deep dive into the heuristic opportunity we are offered daily, minute by minute to shape the future. Is it to be a hellish inferno? A garden full of mystical creatures? A dreamy distant horizon? Can we shake off the density of 3D and move across the bridge of 4D into 5D space?

Recently I found myself painting birds – when I’m drawing or painting a bird yes I can make a bird say cynical things but they themselves are not cynical – they are in fact gravity defying survival machines as pretty as flowers – there is something decidedly not cynical about that…

Over the last few years, I have been curated with Mitchell Brown “Up the DRONE” 111-hour-long avant-garde music festival at Corazón Performing Arts in Topanga (next one will be in February – interested performers can contact me) and am currently preparing for yet another painting show. It looks like another year of breakthroughs; maybe the Greatest Topic of All will be addressed in every heart. This is my wish. And my wishes tend to come true.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Growing up, I was out of my mind. Completely and utterly out of my mind. Driven, ambitious, self-reliant. Always drawing, making, and coming up with ideas.

After my year of lockdown at Dr. Jolly on West’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, UCLA, necessitated by the abrupt withdrawal from prescribed drugs, and an unsuccessful stint at St Monica’s Mom got me into school at CES – Center for Enriched Studies an early version of the Magnet schools -I was working so much at the time – the staff at the school investigated why I was late so often, once I explained I was working all over town they were equally horrified and impressed – I had jobs at a vintage shop, a machine shop, after school, before school, in restaurants at night, but because of that they gave me slack, I was highly functioning and saving for my first truck – there weren’t any other kids working five jobs apart from actor kids doing auditions and films .. they asked me what I wanted to do I said I wanted to paint – Linda Boone was my art class teacher and I went in and said here are my drawings and I would prefer harder things I want to do something and so they found ways for me to turn my hand to stuff like illustrate the biology posters for class.

When I moved to NY at 18 I worked in construction during the day and painted at night and partied hard – it was a scene. I modeled, acted anything to raise the money for the gallons of oil paint I was using; my canvases were so heavy. I recently took one out of storage, and it was weighty and thick with dried paint.

These days, I’ve refined it all and pared it back to a sparser layering of translucents and opalescents. We are in a different moment. It’s a whole different world these days. I make my work portable now! Portable icons and talismans. My girlfriend carries one of my painted birds in her pocketbook. She says she likes to have it with her all the time. I like that.