Sculptor, painter, and printmaker James Joseph Kearns was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1924. Kearns served in the U.S. Army during World War II from 1943 to 1946, after which time he enrolled at DePaul University and the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received his Bachelors in Fine Arts in 1950. Following graduation Kearns took a factory job to support his family while also pursuing fine art as a career, and in 1956 he held his first solo exhibition at the Grippi Gallery in New York, spurring interest from the public and critics alike.

From that time his sculptures, paintings, lithographs and etchings have been included in exhibitions at the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and at the Whitney Museum in New York. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum, the Hirshhorn, and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. He taught at the Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey and the Skowhegen School of Art in Maine, and in 1960, became a professor at the School of Visual Arts, New York, where he recieved the annual Distinguished Artist-Teacher award in 1990.

Kearns currently resides in New Jersey.