James Brown was born in Los Angeles, CA in 1951 and grew up in Southern California. In 1972 he began his studies at the Immaculate Heart College, Hollywood. From 1973 to 1975 James Brown studied at the "Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts" in Paris and graduated from his Hollywood college that same year.
In 1979 the artist attended the Instituto Michelangelo in Florence. James Brown based his artwork on archaic symbols taken from traditional American, African and Hawaiian art.
James Brown lives and works in New York, Paris and Oaxaca, Mexico.