James Herbert is an internationally known American painter and filmmaker. His work is known for its obsession with the nude figure in romantic and erotic figurations with an emphasis on the role of sexuality and scene context. Herbert was born in 1938 in Boston and grew up in Rhode Island. He began his informal art education as a teenager attending nude figure drawing classes at the Rhode Island School of Design. He earned his B.A. degree in art history from Dartmouth College in 1960 and his M.F.A. in painting in 1962 from the University of Colorado where he studied briefly with Clyfford Still and Stan Brakhage.