James Jean 2003 painting, fallen angel, dissection Fables

The first time I met James was back in the spring of 2001 at the printmaking department at SVA. We were students at the time. He and Farel showed up when Farel was going to print one of his etchings from Pop Gun War. Being a comic Nerd, I already knew Farel's work ( I think only issue one was out) and struck up a conversation about printmaking and how those prints added a nice fine art touch to the book. As the conversation turned to what work we were all doing I asked James if he had any examples, and he was like, I have these sketchbooks... yeah "sketchbooks." If anyone has seen the Process Recess books knows what I had just seen in person. Every page was amazing and we all knew James was going to be one of those stand out artists, little did we know how big of a stand out. This was before all those Fables Covers.

I had a few of James' cover sketches over the years but sold them as I always wanted something more finished/painted and from this early era. Jeff Singh had this piece for a long time. Asked about it every now and again but he wasn't ready to let it go - and when he posted it for sale a few months ago, I missed out. Luckily for whatever reason the new owner needed to let it go a few months later and I jumped on it. Very excited to have such a cool mixed media piece that with all the deckled edges harks back to printmaking and makes the piece an art object. On top of that it is impossible to mimic the colors in the scan as a lot of that tan is actually a slight shimmery gold paint. So it really is meant to be seen in person. Very happy to be the next caretaker of this piece.