James Barkley is an artist, illustrator, and professor from Pleasantville, New York. He has received a wide range of commissions across many areas; including children's books, book covers, classic books, advertising, television, newspapers, and magazines, and he has created portraits of many famous personalities and political figures.
Barkley is a professor at the Parsons School of Design and the University of Bridgeport. He has lectured at the Pratt Institute, Marymount College, the School of Visual Arts, and the Society of Illustrators, where he has also served as a trustee.
Barkley has created work for the novels of Pearl S. Buck, Stephen King, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley. Among other commissions, he has created artwork for productions of operas The Merry Widow, Madame Butterfly, and La bohème. He has also painted for National Geographic, the United Nations, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the National Park Service, the U.S. Postal Service, NBC, IBM, General Foods, PepsiCo, Sony, Columbia Pictures, Esquire, and McCall's.