About

“He always had a pen in his hand.” It’s the first image that comes to mind when Cornelia Blake remembers her late husband, internationally renowned artist James Blake. It is an image that persisted, from his childhood spent drawing on sheets of paper spread out in the basement, through his formative years, and into his career as a studio artist. Likewise, it signified how engrained art making was in Blake’s character, in his humanity. He lived life with pen in hand, always at the ready, poised to bring to life his observations, to capture and reveal an intriguing visual narrative of the …