Observer

James Eddy finds inspiration lurking in the devotional retablos he collects.

Brown-black sandpaper, soft pastel pencils, and the shimmer of devotional art converge in the studio of Lafayette artist James Eddy. His pieces—vivid, retablo-inflected scenes rendered on industrial materials—feel both raw and reverent, quietly bridging folk tradition and contemporary design.

“I am not at all religious,” Eddy confesses. Yet the former Texan began collecting—and later trading—19th-century Mexican folk retablos after buying a few in San Antonio in 1991. These narrative devotional paintings on tin panels give thanks in words and images to patron saints, and they’ve since shaped both his eye and his art.

Now an expert on ex-votos, Eddy sells them through his gallery, Divers, online and by appointment in San Francisco, where visitors can also find his own richly textured works on cotton-backed aluminum oxide sandpaper. “My mother is an artist, and she introduced me to sandpaper,” he says. He buys large rolls made for industrial belt sanders, cuts them into big sheets, and painstakingly covers each with a pale ground before layering in his graphically arresting and sometimes provocative compositions.

Often, his images revisit scenes from his own life, small acts of endurance and gratitude rendered in color and line. Some echo drawings made by American Indian prisoners on U.S. Army–issued ledger paper—another visual tradition he collects.

From historic sources, “I’ve appropriated the Phoenix motif, which often appears like a milagro votive in my drawings,” Eddy says.

For nearly fifteen years, he adds, “art has helped me to vent—and tell my story.”  

 diversgallery.com