Artist Statement
My work explores simultaneous feelings of intimacy and detachment I find between myself and my world around me. I create compositions that contain an irony or a contradiction between fantasy and reality, regarding the environment and interpersonal relationships. These moments reveal issues of character, by way of examining desires.
Within my paintings, the natural world bends, expands, and pulls apart from itself, forming stages for symbolic acts. I move impishly through feverish landscapes, where slick, high chroma paint articulates scenes characterized by their luminosity. Thermal lighting is central to the work; citing environmental states, and defining mood within key moments. In some works, animals trample through my childhood garden. In other works, I find myself in conversation with Narcissus, Daphne, Eve, and the Serpent.
My narratives are influenced by personal experiences, literature, art history, and the garden I grew up in. The symbolically laden scenes occupy the space between fantasy and reality. In some works, passages of romance confront implications of threat. In other works, I reference classical tropes through compositions skewed to highlight the peculiar nature of the fantasy’s enactment. Visions of attraction and temptation present themselves, and through careful construction of composition, I question their integrity.
Bio
Julia Gould (b. 1999) is an American artist living and working in Baltimore Maryland. Julia holds a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she majored in Painting, and minored in Printmaking (2022).
Julia’s work has been exhibited and awarded by organizations such as the YoungArts Foundation in Miami, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Andrew Reed Gallery in Tribeca, T & Y Projects in Tokyo, The National Society for Arts and Letters in Washington DC, the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and New American Paintings. In addition she has lectured in the Baltimore area along with exhibiting in solo and invitational, juried exhibitions.
