James Benjamin Franklin’s practice operates at the intersection of painting and sculpture, driven by a deep engagement with material memory and transformation. He constructs his own supports using repurposed textiles—discarded towels, upholstery, carpet—imbued with personal and anonymous histories. These substrates serve as vessels for layered compositions built from paint, sand, metallic pigments, and compound mediums that shift between gesture and form. Franklin’s process is intentionally unpredictable: an intuitive response to how materials resist or absorb, sag or solidify, revealing the tensions between control and surrender, surface and structure.

His work meditates on the emotional residue embedded in domestic materials and spaces—what we inherit, what we abandon, and how memory endures through matter. Themes of migration, absence, and place emerge through repeated acts of layering and erasure, creating complex, charged surfaces that challenge conventions of painting while honoring its possibilities.

Franklin received his BFA from the Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA) and his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI). Recent exhibitions include Laney Contemporary (Savannah, GA); Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI); KMAC (Louisville, KY); FRONT International, the Cleveland Institute of Art (Cleveland, OH); Broadway (New York, NY); Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit, MI); Reyes | Finn (Detroit, MI); and Proyectos Monclova (Mexico City, MX).

His work is held in public collections including the Davis Museum at Wellesley College; JP Morgan Chase; Cranbrook Art Museum; Speed Art Museum; U.S. Art in Embassies; The Progressive Art Collection; Google; Columbus Public Library; El Espacio 23; and the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

Born in Tacoma, Washington (1972)
Lives and works in Detroit, Michigan.