Julia Schwartz

Bio:

Julia Schwartz (b. 1957, Pomona, California) lives and works in El Cerrito, CA. She has exhibited nationally and internationally since 2005. Recent solo and group exhibitions include If Everything is an Outrage with The Binder of Women at Track 16 (Los Angeles), tenderly cradled and lavishly flung at Visitor Welcome Center (Los Angeles), and BODY HIGH at LABspace (Hudson, New York). Curatorial projects include States of Being at the Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA) and Black Mirror at Charlie James Gallery (Los Angeles). Schwartz received the Foundation Prize for Painting from Peripheral Vision Arts in 2016. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including New American Paintings, Fabrik, Huffington Post, and The New York Times. In addition to her art practice Schwartz also writes and lectures about art; she was the original Arts Editor for Figure/Ground.

Statement:

Art depicts my situation—the geographic, the emotional, the existential, the state of the world- and how I make sense of it. These days that means trying to make sense of the senselessness of the everyday world and its outsized “seismic disasters” including personal loss and grief as well as profound political and cultural fragmentation. I have always liked Keats’ idea of “negative capability;” this is quite compatible with being essentially self-taught, although my colleagues remind me that all of us are always learning on the job. Still, without benefit or burden of formal “technique” in art-making, I am comfortable with doubt, uncertainty, the freedom to explore materials and methods, and an infinite freedom to fail.

Let’s Play (2023)

This started with paint pours on raw linen. I cut some smaller pieces to save for separate projects. I also like to drawly freely with sharpie markers without limits. For this quilt, I also added the white dotted lines so that the figure can be resting in the grass or floating in the stars whichever you prefer.