James Austin Cole studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He later lived and exhibited in New York City, and for a decade exhibited with Galatea Fine Art in Boston. His work draws from Pop Art, Surrealism, cinema, and popular culture.

Since moving to Philadelphia, Cole has developed a new visual language combining realistic painting with distortion, repetition, bold color, and ghostlike afterimages. Working primarily in oil on canvas, his recent paintings transform familiar figures into images that feel strange, unstable, and dreamlike.