© JAMES BROWN INTERVIEWS JAMES BROWN
(Or maybe it’s the other way around.)

Location: a half-finished studio somewhere between Marrakesh and Mars. Time: irrelevant. Substances: unclear.

JAMES (I):
Before I ever saw a James Brown painting, I’d heard the stories—visions torn from the underworld of modern art: a man possessed, slashing linen with brushes soaked in ancestral blood and desert dust; a reclusive phantom holed up in some studio-temple between Oaxaca and West Croydon, sipping maté thick as crude oil, surrounded by bone talismans and half-finished saints. They said he painted like a man exorcising seven generations of ghosts—no sketches, no drafts, just raw, psychic transmissions ripped straight from the source. And when I finally saw the work—Christ!—it was like being hit in the face with a flaming relic: ritual, ruin, resurrection, all vibrating at a frequency you don’t just see. These weren’t paintings—they were warnings, memories, spells. So light a candle. Take a breath. Step carefully. You're not here to look—you’re here to survive. And James? He’s already inside your head.

JAMES (I):
So what the hell are you painting now?

JAMES (II):
Whatever the ghosts tell me. Whatever bleeds out. Forms, symbols, scars—some of it’s Australian, some of it’s Catholicism, all of it’s me. Or not me. I don’t know anymore.

JAMES (I):
You sound like a priest on ketamine.

JAMES (II):
Better than sounding like an art critic. Those bastards wouldn’t know a good painting if it pissed on their loafers and asked for forgiveness.

JAMES (I):
But you’ve got a name now. A reputation. Collectors. Paris. Mexico. Sydney. Don’t you ever feel the need to paint something... nice?

JAMES (II):
Nice? Jesus. “Nice” is a war crime. I’m trying to excavate myth with a brush, not decorate a dentist’s lobby.

JAMES (I):
Right. And what’s with the colors lately? Less ochre. More acid. Feels... manic.

JAMES (II):
I want people to feel like they’re staring into a ritual. Or a riot. Or a ritual becoming a riot. Maybe both.

JAMES (I):
List some artists who have shaped your creative life.

JAMES (I):
How’s your sleep?

JAMES (II):
Like a pig in a burning barn—brief, loud, and full of smoke. Dreams are mostly fast food mascots and my childhood dentist playing poker with the devil.

JAMES (I):
What did you eat today?

JAMES (II):
Cold pierogi. A vitamin I found in the glovebox of a borrowed car. Tasted like battery acid.

JAMES (I):
Are you in love?

JAMES (II):
With the idea of disappearing. With long checkout lines. With the woman at the juice bar. With the colours on electrical boxes.

JAMES (I):
What year is it?

JAMES (II):
Somewhere between the apocalypse and the sequel. There’s Wi-Fi but no sense of direction. Everyone’s selling something—souls, soap, a curated version of breakfast.

JAMES (I):
What’s your opinion on God?

JAMES (II):
I once tried to baptize my staff in a public fountain. God doesn't exist cause you can't say the word. It is ineffable clusterfuck of everything ever, I feel it every day though. It courses through us.

JAMES (I):
And what happens next?

JAMES (II):
The sun explodes, the pigeons inherit the earth, and somewhere in a forgotten storage unit, one of my paintings will whisper something obscene to a future Billionaire on his lunch break. That’s the plan.

JAMES (I): How many gods do you believe in when you stub your toe?

JAMES (II):

All of them. Every single deity ever conjured, carved, hallucinated or photoshopped. They all show up for that moment. The Hindu pantheon, the Christian martyr squad, ancient frogs carved into stone by civilizations no one remembers — they’re there, watching. Some with sympathy. Most laughing. Pain’s a hotline to the divine, and stubbing your toe is like dialing the wrong number and getting God’s drunk cousin. You scream, they take notes. I believe in them then. Not during war, or childbirth, or gallery openings. Only when I’ve kicked a coffee table and seen stars.

JAMES (I): What was the last sacred object you threw in the bin?

JAMES (II):

A list. Not just any list—*the* list. Names of people I loved, feared, envied. Ideas for paintings I was too scared to make. One-liners for the kind of art I swore I’d never show. I folded it into a paper airplane, threw it toward a bin and missed. It hit the floor, slid under the fridge, and probably lives there now with the rest of my unresolved emotions. Sacred isn’t about glow—it’s about charge. That list buzzed like a hornet nest in my chest. But I had to bin it. If I kept it, it would own me. And I’m already mortgaged to four versions of myself.

JAMES (I): Which version of you made that promise, and did they even exist?

JAMES (II):

The polite one. The James that answers emails. The one that wears clean clothes and says sorry even when he isn’t. He made it with his mouth full of teeth and fear. Did he exist? Briefly. In the waiting room of a clinic. In a car, parked outside a house he wasn’t brave enough to enter. He existed like an echo does—technically. But that promise stuck to me like a tattoo I didn’t remember getting. Some versions of us die without funeral or warning. But their promises stay. Like gum under the desk. Like inherited guilt.

JAMES (I): What’s the emotional weight of a broken vending machine?

JAMES (II):

A broken vending machine is a perfect metaphor for adulthood: you put in everything, press the button, and it buzzes and flashes and gives you nothing but the echo of your own stupidity. It’s heartbreak with branding. A malfunctioning shrine. The kind of disappointment you can smell. And yet you keep coming back—because maybe next time. Maybe this time. Maybe.

JAMES (I): Why do ghosts prefer fluorescent lighting?

JAMES (II):

Because it flickers. It makes them feel alive. Candlelight is too soft, too poetic. Ghosts hate romance. They want reality, ugly and humming and cold. Fluorescents hum like the inside of a dying thought. That’s where ghosts thrive—in the buzz between what’s said and what’s meant. Plus, nobody looks good under those lights. Not even the dead. Especially not the dead. It’s a kind of equality. Every soul looks like shit. And there’s peace in that.

JAMES (I): What would you trade for one more true thing?

JAMES (II):

A lot. Maybe everything. Maybe just the illusion that I know anything at all. Truth is rare—rarer than love, money, or a day without performance. I’d trade my gallery, my archive, my curated self-image. I’d trade my cleverness. Hell, I’d trade my goddamn cup of tea. Because a true thing—one clean note in the static—that’s worth more than a whole career of near misses and curated vagueness. Truth is ugly and direct and doesn’t match the couch. That’s why it never sells. But I want it. Bad.

JAMES (I): What smells like your childhood but tastes like grief?

JAMES (II):

Bubble tape. Petrol. The smell of an old plastic toy warmed by sun through a dusty window. That cracked scent of innocence. But the taste? That comes years later—when you realise you can’t go back. That toy's gone. That window’s boarded. And you're standing in the same light, older, with someone else’s voice. That’s grief: remembering joy without the body to hold it.

JAMES (I): Which supermarket aisle holds the divine?

JAMES (II):

Cleaning products. No doubt. Everything designed to erase. Bleach, ammonia, lemon-scented vengeance. That’s where God shops—buying solvents for sins. The divine lives in the attempt, not the result. You’ll never get it clean enough, but you try. And in that try, there’s holiness. Plus, the packaging is incredible. I’ve seen more religious iconography on a bottle of Windex than in a cathedral.

JAMES (I):
Final thoughts?

JAMES (II):
I’m not done. I’m not even close. I’ll stop painting when the visions dry up, or the cops come. Whichever happens first.

JAMES (I):
Amen.