Background
James Weeks was born in 1922 in Oakland, California, United States. He had a brother and three sisters in California: Jack Weeks of El Cerrito, Peggy Austin and Nancy Griffin of Santa Rosa, and Sally McCorgary of Mission Viejo.
James Weeks was born in 1922 in Oakland, California, United States. He had a brother and three sisters in California: Jack Weeks of El Cerrito, Peggy Austin and Nancy Griffin of Santa Rosa, and Sally McCorgary of Mission Viejo.
Weeks attended the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), interrupting his studies to serve in the Army Air Corps during World War II.
During his career as a painter, James Weeks exhibited in Southern California in such venues as the Landau and Louver galleries in Los Angeles and the TLK Gallery in Costa Mesa.
Diverging from the placid sunny landscapes and non-objective abstract painting that characterized Bay Area painting of the time, Weeks instead chose to depict aspects of American life in a different light. Jazz musicians, cloudy nightclubs, and sailing races filled Weeks monumental canvases, forever freezing these action-filled moments in paint.
Weeks also taught at his alma mater, at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and in the late 1960s worked as an educator at the University of California. He taught at Boston University from 1970 until his retirement in 1987.
James Weeks died on January 3, 1998 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
James Weeks was an important figure in the Bay Area figurative painter tradition. His most noted works were "Still Life with Life Preserver", "Two Musicians" and "Sonoma Landscape".
His work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Corcoran Museum in Washington.
Quotes from others about the person
Henry Seldis: "With an intensity and directness rarely found in contemporary American painting, Weeks creates his own world in which the consideration of the reality of painting is superbly merged with a concern for the mood, the drama and the uniqueness of the subject matter."
James Weeks had a wife Lynn Williams Weeks, also a painter, and three children, Rebecca Yarowsky, Ellen Weeks and Benjamin Weeks.
