James Seward

James Seward Biography:
James Seward was born in Alabama, and raised in Tennessee. He spent summers with his grandparents in the wild back-country of Alabama. When he was six, his grandfather bought him his first set of oil paints, and as a young child he often painted his grandparents by lamp-light, to their great astonishment. 'From the time I was five years old, I was continually painting and drawing in that great environment,' the artist remembers with fondness.

After military service, Seward spent a year studying art under Howard Boyd Johnson at Watkins Institute in Nashville. In 1947, he enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he met his wife, Lyn. A year later they were married.

After graduation, Seward apprenticed at two Chicago commercial art studios, but in 1954, the family moved to the Midwest. After a year with an agency, he joined Union Gospel Press for the next six years. Since that time, Seward has been self-employed as a freelance illustrator and painter and has created works for most of the large protestant denominations including Standard Publishing in Cincinnati, the Methodists and Baptists in Nashville, the Concordia Lutherans in St. Louis, and the Nazarene Publishing House.  >>click here for more