Artist Statement
Someone once asked me when I was preparing to get ready for a masquerade party, why I liked "playing the fool"? My immediate response to this pejorative question was a feeling of shame. But after some introspection and a few years of added maturity, I feel "playing the fool" is a positive aspect of the human condition, it is risking to go beyond one's self. As a painter I am always taking personal risks, going beyond self imposed barriers. It allows me to create something which is a new or "other." The new costume allows one to be "other" whether by accident or by plan, one becomes more than oneself. It is a transformational moment, just as rich in nature as the moments arrived at through meditation or prayer. Similarly, for me painting is "playing the fool." The foolish moment comes when I arrive at that point in my work when I feel I have given form to something that existed earlier in my mind, in my being. I am willing to risk presenting this as a work, the "other." It is that moment when the work becomes a reality, flesh and blood so to speak, an extension of me. My work is the product of those moments, the exploration of playing the fool. Being the “other”.
About The Artist
James Paradis, 91, graduated from the Mass College of Art with a BFA in the spring of 2005 after having got a bachelor’s degree from Holy Cross College in the late fifties. Even before he had graduated from Mass College of Arts, he had his first major solo show in 2003 at the French Library and Cultural Center of Boston. The same year he sold is first painting at the Mass College of Art annual auction. Since then, he has had a piece in most of the Mass Art auctions for the last 20 years.
Within a couple of years of graduating, his works were shown at the Copley Society of Boston, Granite Shore Gallery and the Court Yard Gallery.
He has exhibited in Auvillar, France where he was invited as a guest artist of the Centre d’Exchange Cultural d’Auvillar in 2002 and 2003.
In 2005 he was in a two man show curated by Roger Hankins at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. Also, in 2005 he was juried into the 10th Annual National Invitation Exhibit at St. Johns University in Jamaica, NY and was selected to be part of the National Prize show of the Cambridge Art Association.
In 2006 and 2007 he was invited to be part of a group show at 38 Cameron Gallery in Cambridge, MA, and in the National Juried show “New Art 06” at the Kingston Gallery, Boston.
He was selected twice for “New Art 06” the third National Invitational Juried Show in the United States. The curators who selected his work were John Thompson, Director of MassMocca and Susan Greenberg of the Yale University Art Department.
An installation piece entitled “Say It Isn’t So” was on display at 46 Waltham Street, Boston. Another work entitled “Barriers” is installed in the reception center of the Moakley Building at the Boston Medical Center as part of their permanent collection. His works are in numerous private collections around the country.
In 2009, the Khaki Gallery of Boston exhibited his work in a solo show entitled “Inside – Out Outside – In.”
He organized a group out door temporary art project titled Sculpture in the Park in 2015, and contributed his work to the Studio Without Walls group show on the Jamaica Way park in 2012.
More recently, in 2021 he had a solo show at Jane Deering Gallery in Gloucester, MA and was invited to a group show there in 2023. His prior shows were reviewed in Art New England, Art Scope, and the Boston Globe.