James Harris draws inspiration from ordinary experiences of everyday life: the ever changing skies, salt air and heat felt fishing the flats, walking a rocky shoreline, or an alluring landscape: studying the play of sunlight and shadows.
The process of transforming a concept into a completed work is four-fold: imagination, research, compositional sketches and painting.
He sketches on location to capture moods and color, relying on his photography to bring compositional details accurately together.
Asked about location sketching, he remarked, "I find my eyes wandering to the birds overhead, or to that bee attracted to the yellow I just laid down.  I absorb the sounds and smell enveloping me.  That is the experience I want people to feel when viewing my work.  While traveling, I gain first hand knowledge of  potenitial subject matter.
Larger paintings are completed in the studio, because of the amount of extensive color mixing and layering required to pull together the details that make these paintings truly "works of art."

    "A painter sees things with a blend of feeling and creative vision: a composite of elements seen first with a mind's eye then, by the artist's hand, meticulously recreated into a tangible life form."