JAMES SURLS (b. 1947; Terrell, TX) is an internationally recognized artist, widely known for his monumental sculptures, drawings, and prints. He utilizes symbolism, pattern, and rhythm to illustrate his reverence for the natural and spiritual worlds.
Surls’ works can be found in public, private, and museum collections throughout the world, including: the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; the country of Singapore; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. He is a recipient of a lifetime-achievement award by the International Sculpture Center and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellow.
Surls currently resides and works in Carbondale, CO where he has lived since 1997. He also maintains his studio and land in Splendora, TX.
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"For more than thirty years, James Surls has been carving—literally and figuratively—a niche for himself in the history of American art. He has embodied the modernist ideals of originality and invention, and of pushing his art continually forward. His art is uniquely and recognizably his own; a Surls is a Surls, and no one else's. His art has been described as ritualistic, totemic, animistic, surrealistic, primitivistic, romantic, and mystic. He has been called a shaman, magician, poet with an axe, and "Lone Star Michelandgelo." He creates art that is intensely personal but that seeks universality. He sees with his eye; he looks into his I (self). He brings fields of flowers into being by hacking, peeling, chiseling, carving, rasping, burning, oiling, and rubbing pieces of wood. He strives to be avant-garde yet subscribes to the belief that art tells a story. His art is accessible and engaging, complex and paradoxical, not unlike the artist himself. James Surls, in sum, is an American original."
— Mark Thistlewaite
Excerpt from the essay "An Art of the Eye and the I" in the book From the Meadows and Beyond, 2003