ames McMullan was born in 1934 in Tsingtao, North China, where his grandparents founded an Anglican Mission. He was educated in China, India, Canada, and the United States, and graduated from Pratt Institute in 1958.

From 1965 to 1968 Mr. McMullan was a member of Push Pin Studio. During the 1970's, he provided journalistic illustrations for many magazines, including several for a story in New York Magazine that became the visual inspiration for the movie Saturday Night Fever. Since that time he has done a wide variety of work, including a short film, Christmas 1914, part of a PBS Christmas special called Simple Gifts. As the principal artist for Lincoln Center Theater, he has created posters for dozens of plays, such as Anything Goes, The Front Page, Six Degrees of Separation, The Sisters Rosensweig, Carousel, and Arcadia. His long-standing relationship with Lincoln Center Theater has recently been renewed.

In 1990, Mr. McMullan completed a sixty-foot mural, Rehearsal Chairs, on the 65th Street entry hall of the Vivian Beaumont and Mitzi Newhouse Theaters at Lincoln Center.

Mr. McMullan has been a Director and Vice President of the AIGA. In 1988, The Society of Illustrators awarded him the Hamilton King Award, and the Advertising Club of New York presented him with an ANDY Award for his posters for the musical "Anything Goes." In 1991, Mr. McMullan was honored by the Drama Desk Association with a special award for "consistently inspired artwork for theatrical productions." In 1995 he was given the Joan Cullman Award for his creative contribution to Lincoln Center Theater and in 1998 he received the Herschel Levit award for lifetime achievement from Pratt Institute.

Mr. McMullan initiated the High-Focus Drawing Program at the School of Visual Arts and has written High-Focus Drawing, published by Overlook Press in 1995. His other published works include Revealing Illustrations (Watson Guptill, 1982), The Theater Posters of James McMullan (Penguin Studio, 1998), and the following picture books: Nutcracker Noel (HarperCollins, 1993), Noel the First (HarperCollins, 1996), Hey, Pipsqueak! (HarperCollins, 1995), The Earth Is Good (Scholastic, 1999), Papa's Song (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), I, Stink! (HarperCollins, 2002) and I'm Mighty! (HarperCollins, 2003). His most recent picture book is I'm Dirty!, written by his wife, Kate McMullan (Joanna Cotler Books/HarperCollins.)

Mr. McMullan lives with his wife, Kate, and daughter, Leigh, in New York City and Sag Harbor, New York.