James Bernard Short
For inquiries/information: 4@jamesbernardjames.com
The Artist
For me, the impulse to “take pencil to paper” has always been strong. When I was four years old, my mother bought a sketch book and a set of pencils in the hope that I’d be dissuaded from scribbling on the walls, and the inside covers of her books. Since then, I have been engaged in one form of creative expression or another, wherein I attempt to translate colors and shapes into new ideas.
Shortly after completing my undergraduate studies, there was a (too long) period during which the sketchbooks stayed closed, and my pencils remained inactive. They sat in a container on a shelf inside a closet in my home. I’d been searching for perfection, but unable to find it, found myself disillusioned with the process.
Over time I learned to make peace with my imperfection. I believe my art—like my writing—is a gift, and as such, it must be cultivated and put to good use.
Graphite and colored pencils are my preferred mediums of choice. In addition to honoring ancestry and Blackness, I’m also interested in exploring themes that live at the intersection of my twin passions of literature and art. “Married to Trouble,” “Harlem Girls,” and “Arc de Triomphe (The Bridge)” are recent examples of this approach.
The Writer
I came to writing much later than my peers. Unlike drawing, telling stories wasn’t always something I aspired to do, but it was something (according to others) I was able to do well.
The decision to use a nom de plume stemmed from a basic desire for anonymity, but I believe the fact that I chose not to stray too far from my actual identify revealed something deeper about what the writing meant to me, and how I wanted my audience to receive it.
I answer to multiple names, depending on whether we grew up together, went to college together, or met as creatives during workshop or fellowship opportunities. Bernard—including its Bernie and Bern derivatives—represents the unmasked, most vulnerable version of myself. While it is no longer an explicit goal, my drawings still yearn for adjacency to perfection, but what I write thrives at the opposite end of that spectrum, and facing my imperfections is not something I could honestly do as anyone other than Bernard.
So, writing under the pseudonym Bernard James, my singular ambition as a writer is to produce smart, expressive, and culturally authentic content that captures the wide spectrum of aspirations and challenges encountered by persons of color. On this site’s Read Me page, you will find examples of my work and the journals who were kind enough to publish them.
One final but important note: I was born in Pennsylvania and for the past 40+ years have resided in MniSota , but my ancestral roots—the soil that holds my family’s blood and bone—are in South Carolina, and it is from this vantage point that I most enthusiastically engage with the page.