He’s been a jack-of-all-trades most of his life, but being a full-time artist is what Middleton abstract expressionist James Ackerman ultimately chose when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020.

Ackerman’s triptych, “Prelude 2,” a series of three acrylic paintings on canvases that mix contrasting hues like black and white and red and blue, are displayed as part of Carnelian Art Gallery’s current exhibition, “Finding Color In the Chaos.” The show not only commemorates the gallery’s first year of operations, but focuses on abstract art. It goes until April 30, and includes other Wisconsin artists Denise Presnell, Jen Dunlop, Matthew Braunginn and Evan Bradbury, Carnelian Art Gallery owner and head curator.

Ackerman gave me the privilege of paying him a visit earlier this week to his Middleton home studio, which is in his basement. His art collection is akin to many of the artists I have had the pleasure of getting to know in the last six months as marketing director of Carnelian Art Gallery. If Ackerman’s paintings aren’t displayed on the wall, they are leaning up against it; evidence of how much work he has put in since the pandemic began.

“I feel like blue today,” said Ackerman during our visit as he started a new painting. “Mixing different blues and whites to get a base down.

“Before I start if i’m anxious, or nervous, or if its negative feelings, painting helps me relax and get out of my head. Time stands still. It also flies by. If I think it has taken me 15 minutes, an hour or two can go by.”

After he puts his base coat of acrylic paints down, “another idea might come up.”

“I’ll start refining it and I don’t know what exactly it’s going to turn into,” Ackerman said.

Originally from Brookfield, Illinois, he started painting when he had just graduated high school in 1983. He had always been a creative, putting on plays with other kids in his childhood neighborhood.

“There wasn’t one defining moment that got me started,” Ackmerman said. “Painting was just another outlet to express myself.”

He put the brush down for a while to focus instead on a career in acting. Ackmernan attended Triton College in River Grove, Illinois, and got involved in the theatre there. After university, Ackmerman did some extra work in Chicago. He eventually ended up as an extra in the 1992 film “A League of Their Own,” with Tom Hanks as the lead. The film is an American sports comedy drama. Ackmerman said he played a 1940s service man with a uniform sitting in a church.

Subsequently, Ackerman worked stints in maintenance, as a limo driver and even as a wholesale toy salesmen.

Fast forward to 2020, and Ackerman needed a way to feel in control during the health crisis. Turning back to painting was the thing that could “quiet his mind.” The first work Ackerman finished then was an abstract landscape painting titled “New World Rising.”  The artist mainly experimented with hard lines, edges and geometric shapes. In high school, Ackerman’s paintings took on a more formless look.

Today, depictions of freedom again show up in Ackerman’s paintings. His recent artworks represent a balance abstraction and form.

Jackson Pollack, late American painter and central figure in the abstract expressionist movement, mainly inspires Ackerman’s pieces.

“I’m also inspired by a living artist named Chuck Hipsher, who does a lot of vibrant, big, bold, brush strokes,” he said. “They are messy, but they are just so precise and technically awesome.”