Claerwen James (b. 1970) originally trained as a molecular biologist at Oxford University and University College London. She graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2003, where she won the Melvill Nettleship Prize for Figure Composition. James specialises in portraits, mostly of unknown young women that originate from found photographs and others taken by the artist. The awkwardness of the photographic moment is crucial to the painful, elegiac quality of the paintings.
Introduced to Flowers Gallery by Andrew Stahl as part of Artist of the Day in 2004, James has gone on to have numerous solo exhibitions both in the UK and the US.