James Rivington Pyne was educated in Massachusetts and received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania and Master of Arts from Cambridge College/Antioch. For 15 years he taught in the Philadelphia school system. He was a life-long summer resident of Maine and in 1983 moved here permanently. He was a member of the New England Sculpture Association (NESA). "In my work I use wood, steel, found wood and latex. I also do bronzes. I try to capture, in birds for instance, either the subject’s extreme stillness (a heron fishing) or its opposite. I find the best way to express a bird’s edginess on a limb or briskness in flight is by rough, almost blurred outlines, similar to a sketch, rather than smooth finishes. My work is stylized but the subject is never unrecognizable. A source of inspiration for me are the 18th Century animal miscellanies depicting creatures drawn by artists whose sole knowledge of their subjects came, not from actual sighting but from hearsay, folklore, and in some cases a desire to amuse or terrify."