About Us

History

James has always felt the call of art – since he was a boy, he was fascinated by artists like Norman Rockwell, and began to emulate that visual style in his own pencil drawings.

In 1968, he attended an art course at a local college; in this setting his own artistic style became twisted by the culture of the day. This confusion led to him drawing devils and becoming enamored with dark themes in his art, to the extent that he ended up signing his art as Tibsen Semaj – James Nesbit spelled backwards. The enemy loves to take our gifts meant to glorify God and twist them backwards for his own purposes.

However, an intercessor saw him in his lost state and began to pray on his behalf, calling him out of darkness and into the light. James would find that glorious Light in 1982. After getting saved, James burned or painted over many of his earlier works – he did not want those images to continue to “speak.”

Since his decision to follow Christ, James has attempted to use his artistic gift to magnify and glorify his Creator – redeeming the gift that the enemy had once tried to steal. Initially, this was done in a more traditional medium, using acrylic paint; during the late 1980s and 1990s, James even painted several large murals in churches – some as large as 8 feet high by 32 feet wide. James even courted controversy in 1985, when his painting entitled And Jesus Wept (depicting Jesus weeping over aborted babies) was taken down at a local art exhibit for “disturbing” those in attendance.

James answers the question “what is prophetic art?”

One of the few surviving works from James’s lost days, a pencil drawing completed in 1977.

A brief account of the 1985 controversy written in, of all places, Playboy magazine.

James painting The Portal, a mural depicting angelic messengers and heavenly worshippers (not shown here) at his home church in Collinsville, IL, 1997.

Later in 1982, James was given a prophetic word that God would send his art around the world. As so many of us have felt, he thought the fulfillment of that word would happen very soon. By James’s own estimate, it took roughly twenty-five years to see that word fulfilled. James had a similar vision of his own, seeing art being rolled into tubes and sent around the world. His first attempted iteration at fulfilling these words, Visions of Glory, focused around printing James’s art on t-shirts – an ambitious goal, particularly considering the technology of the time.

Around this same time, James would meet the love of his life, Colleen, a professional ballet dancer for St. Louis Ballet; the two would marry in 1986. With Visions of Glory, James would create the art, but Colleen would have to figure out how to reproduce it using a four-color process – a considerable challenge, to say the least! That business was never as fruitful as either of the Nesbits would have hoped, but connections made during this period led to a years-long friendship between James and Nellie Gray, the founder of the March For Life, and for several years James was honored to create the cover art for March For Life’s annual reports.

Also in 1986, James saw the emerging field of digital art, and felt that the colors of digitally-produced art were much more vibrant than those available in traditional paints. Following the prompting of the Lord, James purchased his first computer in 1994, a Macintosh with a 700MB hard drive (some of his master files for single images are larger than 700MB today). It was a slow process learning an entirely new creative workflow, but gradually James became more comfortable with this style of creating art.

James believes that artists have a Habakkuk 2 mandate, and that art should amplify the voice of the prophets. All art has a voice – rather than a picture merely being worth a thousand words, as the old adage says, they can be worth multiple millions of words. Art has the ability to edify or destroy; to bring life or inspire death. As such, prophetic art should therefore proclaim the glory of the Lord in the coming day.

Heeding the voice of the prophets, James has attempted to use his grace gift to serve theirs. Honor unlocks glory, and by honoring prophetic words, their glory may be released in a greater dimension.

Beginning in 2004, James has faithfully created images depicting the Hebraic year, based on prophetic words and insights given by Chuck Pierce, Robert Heidler, Dutch Sheets, Cindy Jacobs, and other speakers at the annual Starting the Year off Right and Head of the Year gatherings through Glory of Zion ministries in Corinth, TX.

In 2005-2006, James also created art highlighting words and visions from Chuck Pierce and Dutch Sheets as they traveled the United States, proclaiming the prophetic destiny over each state in the union. These efforts, among countless others, helped catapult James to national recognition.

At virtually the same time, James began to lead several national intercessory initiatives: River Flush in 2007, Mississippi Mercy in 2009, etc. These journeys and initiatives allowed him meet many wonderful friends along the way, as well as engage in strategic high-level intercession in virtually every state of the nation. Click here for more information about James’s intercessory and ministry history.

2008 gained James wide recognition with his completion of the Seven Mountain series depicting each of the seven mind molders of culture based primarily on Lance Wallnau’s teachings on the topic.

In 2011, James headed the DC40 prayer journey in our nation’s capital, laying spiritual siege to the city for forty days. Early on in that journey, James experienced a vision in which the Lord said, “I don’t want your songs, and I don’t want your words. I want you to present yourselves before me and sing ‘holy,’ and I will show you what to release next.” This transformational experience led to the foundation of Tribe Quantum, a community of prophetic musicians and singers who were changed by that encounter and revelation concerning worship. This led to James traveling for the next decade teaching about and releasing prophetic, governmental worship throughout the nation and overseas; marrying his artwork and sound in a way that he had wanted to do for decades. Click here for more information about Tribe Quantum.