About the Artist

Artist’s Statement

My work is focused on articulating moments that offer perspective on the way I, and perhaps we, move through the world. I create compositions that contain an irony or a contradiction between fantasy and reality regarding the environment and interpersonal relationships. These moments reveal my character, often by way of examining desires. Through metaphor, color, composition, and light, the intimation of my work reveals itself. 

Within my paintings, the natural world bends, expands, and pulls apart from itself, forming stages for symbolic acts. The viewer moves impishly through feverish landscapes, where ferocity and desiccation confront images of sultry abundance. Thermal lighting is central to the work; it cites environmental realities, and creates the feeling of coming upon something that was once hidden. I look for this feeling of discovery through transitional light; where spotlights, firelight, and/or moonlight meet a scenario happening in the dark. I often ask questions through the relationship between the light, the forest, and the characters at play. In some works trophy animals hang in my childhood garden. In other works I empathize with Narcissus, Daphne, Eve, and the Serpent. While influenced by classical ideas, archetypes fall apart as personal mythology narrates the complexities of desire. 

 Oily, high chroma paint articulates scenes characterized by their luminosity. I work carefully, layering transparent passages of paint to preserve chroma intensity. This allows for the glow that comes from light passing through the paint and hitting the finley sanded white surface beneath it. This paint handling is drawn from printmaking and ink wash techniques, which often involve depicting the negative space, and allowing the white surface to provide light. My work starts with staging and acting, in my studio and my garden. Through the construction of sets, I play with the various elements until I find the relationship between light, subject, and color that best conveys my narrative intent.  

My narratives are influenced by literature, art history, personal experiences, and the garden I grew up in. The work is concerned with when things break: when stories of the natural world, and the people/animals in it, are presented through a gluttonous lens. The symbolically laden scenes are inspired by moments where I see an irony, or a contradiction between a fantasy and a reality. In some works, this is between an idyllic image, and the environment which is disturbed by fire or other 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.

My work explores the simultaneous feelings of intimacy and detachment found between myself and my world around me. The play between what is real and what is imagined allows me to reflect and offer perspective on the ways we move through the world, and what that says about us. 

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/or awarded by organizations such as the Baltimore Museum of Art, the YoungArts Foundation in Miami, Andrew Reed Gallery in Tribeca, T & Y Projects in Tokyo, and the National Society for Arts and Letters in Washington DC. In addition she has lectured in the Baltimore area along with exhibiting in solo and invitational, juried exhibitions.

CV