James Cumming RSA was born in 1922 in Dunfermline and after his schooling at Dunfermline High School he began his studies at Edinburgh College of Art. These studies were interrupted by war service for five years in the RAF Volunteer Reserve. He trained as a pilot at the British Training School in Texas then served with Training Command in India and Burma.
Returning to the College of Art, he resumed his studies and, after a postgraduate year, was awarded a Travelling Scholarship which he spent with a crofting family in Callanish on the Island of Lewis. This experience formed the basis of his work and imagery for many years to come.
In 1966 a retrospective exhibition of Cumming's work was mounted by the Carnegie Trust in the town of his birth, Dunfermline. From that time onwards, his paintings were to develop in new directions with interest in the electron microscope, concerning the visual nature of living cells, as well as the ancient Sumerian cuneiform alphabet, resulting in paintings of an abstract hard edge nature. Gradually a balance began to assert itself, introducing a series of paintings of puppets, circus, portraits, still life and space-age together with works associated with his war-time experience. As a painter, Cumming stood outside the main stream of Scottish painting of the time which owed its groundwork to the expressive Colourist tradition.
Cumming served as President of the Society of Scottish Artists (1958-61); was a contributer to BBC radio and television arts programmes; was awarded an International Scholarship in Humanities to Harvard and became a Member of the National Broadcasting Council. He was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy as an Associate in 1962 and that same year was elected a member of the RSW. He became a full Academician in 1970 and three years later was elected Treasurer and subsequently Secretary in 1978.
Cumming was involved with the RSA Festival Exhibitions and was particularly responsible for the general organising of the Academy’s 150th Anniversary Exhibition in 1976. In 1986 he was elected Custodian of the Academy Collections.