Art, Life and Everything
Julie Umerle's long awaited memoir follows a lifetime of art, life and just about everything. Born in Connecticut, USA to a Polish-American father and a mother from the East End of London, she moved to Walthamstow in England with her mother at the age of five, whilst her father remained in Connecticut.
She went on to study French Literature at the University of Sussex, and art at the respected Falmouth School of Art in Cornwall, then to New York for her subsequent Masters at Parsons School of Art.
Typically following her own path in art, she uses both strong and subtle colour and line, whilst some of her recent paintings are more organic (as raindrops or microscopic organisms). Her book contains not enough examples of her artwork (her memoir ends in 2010), but the 38 colour plates that accompany her story describe her thinking in visual form.
This is a memoir that succeeds in allowing us to see the artist through her personal stories that are intriguing and interesting in themselves: her life, her art, and everything she puts into these public works. Highly recommended as appealing to artists, biographists, and story tellers for posterity. And this reader at least, would look forward to a book of more of Umerle's artwork.
Malcolm Stow
London, May 2020
