James Mortimer

Artist Profile

James Mortimer (b. 1989, UK). Lives and works in Oxford.

Mortimer paints imagined Edens: sunlit, hazy landscapes where people and animals live side by side, free of social constraint and given over to appetite, idleness and casual cruelty. Working in oil, often at large scale, he uses the composition and finish of Renaissance painting as a stage for dark comedy about human nature.

Each painting unfolds as a small tale, where a gesture, a piece of fruit or an animal carries a double meaning. Drawing on Northern Renaissance painting, myth and folklore, the work turns on an old paradox: the longing for innocence and communion with nature is compromised by the very act of desiring it. Beneath the wit sits a serious question about how far human nature has really travelled from the animal. Mortimer also works in sculpture. Travels through post-communist Eastern Europe and China after his studies continue to inform his visual vocabulary.

Mortimer studied sculpture at Bath School of Art and Design, where he received the Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor Prize in 2013. He has worked with James Freeman Gallery, London, since 2014. His solo exhibitions there include Mortimer! (2014), Land of Mortimer (2019) and Brutes (2026), and he shows regularly with the gallery at London Art Fair. Earlier solo exhibitions were held at Catto Gallery, London, and Accesso Gallery, Pietrasanta. His work was included in the Royal Academy’s 250th Summer Exhibition (2018) and has been shown at Saatchi Gallery, London.

His work is held in the collection of X Museum, Beijing, and in corporate and private collections across Europe, the United States and Asia.

At Colstoun

James was artist in residence at Colstoun in September 2024. Mortimer set about exploring in greater depth the