Artist Bio

James (Jake) White lives in Bellevue, Nebraska. Jake’s love for drawing stemmed from his father, who grew up on a farm with horses. His father loved to draw horses. When Jake was about 10 years, his father shared his love of drawing with Jake, teaching him the fundamentals of drawing horses. Jake’s father had several books about horses that detailed each type of horse. Jakes used these photos to draw anatomically correct horses which have led Jake to draw in the technique of photorealism.  Jake’s main goal in his artwork is to show the emotional and physical expressions of the subjects through hyperrealism. Jake desires the viewer to react with an emotional feeling to his artwork.

After spending most of his life drawing with pencil and paper, Jake began drawing in 2017 with the medium of digital charcoal and graphite using a drawing tablet. Tragedy and a blessing happened in December of 2017 when Jake was having a routine surgery that turned into a life-threatening operation. Leaning on his faith as he recovered from this surgery sparked a strong desire to draw the miracles of Jesus from Bible passages in early 2018. In late 2019 Jake led a team of artists at his church in a Lent/Tenebrae project to be held in 2020.  All of the artists completed their pieces of art but due to the pandemic, the church was closed.

Despite this temporary delay for the showing Jake decided to do the other drawings producing a total of eight stages of the Tenebrae service and created an illustrated book of the Tenebrae which will be released for Lent of 2021. 

Jake served in the Army from 1983 to 1989 and again from 2003 to 2008  where he served in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay Cuba, and various stateside duty stations. During his time in service he designed various items for the units he belonged to including coin designs and woodworking projects. Jake has also designed and produced a podium and tithe boxes.