“I came to the Hamptons to paint, not expecting it to affect me. I came home to a place I had never been before.”

James feels right at home at the Pollock-Krasner House. It makes sense considering his grandmother was Jackson Pollock’s aunt. James never met his second cousin Jackson Pollock or his wife Lee Krasner in person, but he remembers showing his friends at school their paintings in the World Book Encyclopedia. Of Pollock’s disruptive kinetic pieces, those classmates would respond with, “that’s not a painting.”

Beyond the familial connection and shared careers as artists, the two share a number of striking similarities. Both are the youngest of five siblings, and both credit the influence and mentorship of an older brother as instrumental in their decision to pursue art as a career. And just as James was drawn to the Hamptons by its extraordinary light, so was Pollock decades before.

The house is a remarkable record of both Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner, two of the most celebrated abstract impressionists of the 20th century. On the floor of the studio are remnants of Pollock’s kinetic process: splatters of paint that missed the canvas. On the walls are traces of Krasner’s brushwork, remnants of the large-scale paintings she created there after Pollock’s death.