James Corbett (born 1997) is an American artist living and working in Oakland, California. He began studying art as an undergraduate at Amherst College, and has been showing his work in the Bay Area since 2022. Before committing to drawing and painting, he experimented with various art forms, including ceramics, glassblowing, and photography. He also has a longstanding passion for music and literature, and he was once a handful of signatures away from enrolling in PhD programs in both English and philosophy. His reactions to music and literature sometimes influence his choice of subject-matter and his aims in particular paintings.

Corbett paints in large part because he loves other artists’ work. When he is moved by a painting, he feels compelled to make something of his own that captures the expressiveness that he finds in the original. Sometimes he craves a moody, passionate intensity, and sometimes a joyous or serene lightness of touch. His current body of work draws on colors and compositions from paintings by Whistler, Klimt, Munch, Cezanne, Corot, and Derain.