Summer Paintings

Welcome back to my blog. Thanks for checking me out!

Here is one of the paintings I've been making in the studio this summer - in addition to the Strata series I showed you in my previous post last month.

For these Summer Paintings I used the invitation cards from our 'open studios' event earlier this year (Fire Station Centenary) and painted over the cards. You can just make out some of the original image beneath my brush marks if you look very closely...

  ©Julie Umerle. All rights reserved

         

Summer in the City

This is my first summer in the studio for four years! The last three years, I have had to sublet over the summer months. So wonderful to be able to throw open the windows in the studio on a fine day.

This year I have been making a couple of series of works on paper. New images from the Strata series are on my website and I've posted one here to show you. I have also completed five paintings on linen. Funny, it doesn't seem I have been that productive, but actually I am quite happy with how things are going in 2011.

I have a group exhibition coming up in London at the beginning of September where I'll be showing two pieces of work - memo to self: have to go to the framers next week to get these framed for the exhibition. Busy, busy...

©Julie Umerle. All rights reserved.

Review of New Work

'Red/Violet', Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 in.
©Julie Umerle. All rights reserved

Julie Umerle: New Paintings

"The first thing I noticed when looking at these works, was the utter frankness about their construction. They exist by virtue of their process, yet this is not a process painting from 1970. Rather, there appears to be a new way of thinking with abstract painting. It lies in asking the epistemological question: "What can paint do as a material abstracted from its support?"

Julie Umerle’s process explores several layers of cognition, setting up conditions for chance, and responding to the natural physicality of paint itself. After all, paint is an inherently expressive medium. Her decision making process highlights how far the accident will go to create an interesting material surface. Umerle arrives at her imagery via a hyper formalism that makes no distinction between medium, surface, and support. The formal apparatus is gravity’s gesture, its pull downwards. Illusionistic depth is achieved by the layering of the medium, which is an interesting nod to history. The physicality of the layers bears a relationship to the Baroque curtain; here it is a curtain that is divided into strands of acrylic. It has the effect of suspending time, as the paint tends to conceal and reveal, stretching away from the viewer into infinite space. This is especially the case in a stunning work like Red/Violet. It is primarily the color, vermillion and purple, that effuses a sense of shimmering intensity, blurring any focal point.

In a way, this work serves as a record of time and space, both complimenting each other in equal parts. In an exciting fashion, these two distinct aspects of a painting coalesce into a structure that is both familiar and strange."

Jason Stopa, NY Arts magazine, vol 17, summer 2011

Beating the Odds

This weekend, I went to a professional development session with Matt Roberts at his gallery in Vyner Street. Most artists at the early or mid-career stage of their career are looking at ways of moving on to the next level, but it's always useful to have some input whatever stage you're at.

Matt started by asking what my goals were. Easy enough to answer. He looked at some of my paintings and my cv. Apparently, I'm not exhibiting enough to gain exposure for my work. Artists who are successful in promoting their careers often show their work perhaps 8-10 times a year. Me, I am usually happy with one show minimum, and three shows per year would count as a good year. I shall try to aim higher in the future.

I heard that only about 500 artists in London are making a living by their work alone, although there are thousands of artists here, and more art schools and galleries than in any other capital city. With odds like that, it's no wonder that so many artists struggle to survive.

A life of its own

Someone contacted me recently through my website about two large paintings she'd bought of mine about nine years ago. She sent me jpgs of the work and I immediately recognized the paintings. They were from a batch of work I'd consigned to a skip in 2001 when I'd moved from a large studio complex in London at Acme Studios, Carpenters Road, Stratford.

And those are not the first of the paintings that have since been resurrected from the skip. A couple of years ago another person contacted me about an early piece of work, which was from the very same batch of paintings I'd tried to discard.

When the studios closed, due to redevelopment of the area, many of the artists were sifting through their paintings which had accumulated over the years, having to make decisions about what to keep and what to discard. Some artists had to put work into storage, or just didn't have room in their new studios to take everything.

A friend helped me sort through my work. All the paintings I felt I could live without, being documented on slide, were discarded. I guess I must have consigned about ten paintings to one of the skips in the yard.

But I discovered that the work has a life of its own once it leaves the artist's studio, and there is no knowing where it will ultimately find a home. Sometimes a painting will change hands many times, people selling it on or giving the work as gifts.

Despite my best efforts to destroy those early paintings, they are still in the world! I have learnt from this experience - and now I always slash any canvases I wish to discard before I bin them. That way they are well and truly destroyed...

The Fire Station

Painting's going well! Thanks to everyone who's reading my blog and posting comments - it's great to have your feedback.

More about my studio - my studio's in London, in a disused Fire Station built in 1911 for the GLC. It's in an industrial area of the city, near to the Olympic site. When the building first opened as a fire station a hundred years ago, there were horse-drawn fire engines there. The families of the firemen used to live upstairs too, so there's a real sense of history to the building.

There are five floors of studios, overlooking a courtyard on one side and the A12 motorway on the other. The building is just a short distance from Canary Wharf's gleaming towers which can be seen from the road, but it's a world away in every sense. Indeed, a friend visiting from New York remarked how similar the area felt to Long Island City, a similarly urban environment.

There are concrete floors in my studio on the ground floor, and it's freezing cold in winter. Yet it's the best studio I've had so far. I must say that the two studios I worked in when I lived in New York were some of the worst!

Twelve new artists are moving into the studios upstairs next week, and the decorators have been busy for several weeks getting their spaces ready. The residents upstairs change every five years. They live and work there, but my studio is a working space only - about 600 sq ft, with three big windows and a sky light. Four other artists have studios downstairs near me.

When I first left art school, I used to paint at home (not at the kitchen table, but in one of the rooms in my flat) but I soon realized that I prefer to have a separation between home and work. Everyone's practice is different.

I've posted a photo of my studio at the Fire Station above - it does not always look that tidy!

In the Studio

Working hard in the studio now that the days are warmer and it's staying light for longer. So far this year I've completed two new paintings, and am working on two 60" square paintings at the moment. It's been a good start to the year, and quite productive. I'm using a palette of rose and magenta, and everything glows very nicely when the light hits the canvas at a certain angle.

I'm working towards a project at the end of the year for which I'll need fifteen large paintings, so lots to do before then. More details later. Will keep you posted!

Latitude

                                       ©Julie Umerle. All rights reserved.
                          

"Vertical lines in varying greens, a light pastel beaming and seeming to rise to an almost neon state against the rest of the greens, ranging from a muddied army green to a saturated blue-green, alternating between black lines composing a rhythmic visual push, pushing throughout the entire piece.

In other works, Umerle’s mark is less hard-edged, softer, blending in and out of different values with gradual ease.Whether precise in a clean-cut, graphic quality or blurred and moody in atmospheric state, there is a consistency in Umerle’s compositional harmony that defines her work."

NY Arts Magazine, 22nd February 2010

Installation views of 'Cosmos or Chaos'

'Cosmos or Chaos'

There's an exhibition of my paintings coming  up in the new year in London at studio1.1, a gallery in Shoreditch, entitled 'Cosmos or Chaos'. This will be my first solo exhibition since 2008, and it is supported by Arts Council England, the national development agency for the arts, through its Grants for the arts programme for individuals and organisations. I am really thrilled to have this opportunity to make my work more accessible, and to bring it to the attention of a wider audience. Hope you will come by to say hello and take a look at my new paintings.

Private view: Thursday 7th January, 6-9pm
Exhibition runs from 8 - 24 January 2010

Cosmos or Chaos:  "As the title immediately suggests, Julie Umerle’s paintings exist at the meeting point of decision and accident, as indeed do our lives.

In this series of works, created specifically for the exhibition, gravity and design collude and collide in a synthesis which calls up a most unexpected counterpart. Colours are chosen to oppose and confound, while the exact materiality, the weight of the paint interferes, patterning its own trajectory."

studio1.1
57a Redchurch Street
London  E2 7DJ

Open: Wednesday - Sunday, 12 - 6pm

Website:  http://www.studio1-1.co.uk/

Nearest tube: Liverpool Street