James Tipton

James Tipton has been painting from early on in his life. He turned to painting especially throughout the summer months to explore beauty and share in creating it. An artist whose work explores his response to time spent walking through the familiar woods and forest preserves of the Chicago suburbs, Tipton’s studies invite viewers to experience the transformative stillness of nearby familiar fields, woods, rivers, and forest preserves we all know and love.

Tipton’s studio and en plein air studies evoke this sense of place as first influenced by his rich childhood memories of visiting family in the expansive Cherokee lands of northeastern Oklahoma. His journey as an artist stretches far back with a desire to respond to common natural beauty just beyond our doorstep, and is a meditation on the meaning of land and his longing to speak of its full poetic splendor.

A Cherokee Nation citizen and member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, Tipton was raised in downstate Illinois and currently resides in the Chicago suburbs with his wife and three children, some of Tipton’s works are now held and on display by the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.