James started exhibiting and winning awards at the age of eight. His mother was a docent at the North Carolina Museum of Art where young James spent much of his time wandering the galleries. At age ten his family moved to Atlanta where he enrolled in the Fay Gold Art Studio. He then attended an arts based middle school and remembers the moment he first heard the name Michelangelo. James went to two colleges as an art major after which he enrolled in two Ateliers for classical drawing and painting, First in Boston and then Florence, Italy. Post Atelier, James pursued study as an apprentice working with Italian master Romano Stefanelli and Ben Long (both students of legendary Pietro Annigoni). James holds the lineage and mastery of both the French Academic and Italian Renaissance traditions.