Julia K. Sanders

July 11th through September 5th

Opening Reception 
Tuesday, July 11th
7 PM to 9 PM

Artist Statement

Each painting reflects an evolution of the pattern inside the larger whole of my artistic pursuit. Preceding patterns are re-presented in subsequent patterns. When we shift between “levels of magnification” we find that the material and phenomenal worlds are in constant flux. Yet, when we focus in on subsections of the main pattern, within the whole, each level of pattern contains elements that re-contextualize its former state, it’s minutia of features, like an echo. The quirky ability of new manifestations to echo prior manifestations is what we term “memory”, or recollection. 

The variation of paint application, from its opacity, color, and texture to the speed it was performed and recorded, works like the nervous system of each piece. The system resists rigidity and stagnation as readily as our brains resist holding onto our dreams upon waking. 

Movement, flexibility, and mobility are crucial adaptations to a life in constant flux. If I glance at big book of my life’s work as a painter, I am encountered with an eerie feeling of a constant entity, a ghost echo, a feedback loop. An eternal return. But the memory merely serves to cushion the nervous system from slipping into incoherency and meaninglessness. Accordingly, the reiteration of the iconic female figure, the persistent auto-biographical focus of my life’s work, serves as a neural pathway connecting the episodic flux of each painting, and each exhibition, to the greater whole of the oeuvre. 

While movement and flexibility of a well-lubricated and responsive nervous system keep this sort of situation from becoming too “sticky”, the repetition and re-presentation of former iterations, the greater re-collection, is what gives room and space for Morphogenesis to take place. 

But, rather than presenting the iconic feminine figure in a frozen portrayal, this currant exhibition acts more like a system of visual imagery. The system is meant for continuations rather than endings, and is therefore expressed serially and repetitively. The movement from piece to piece is meant to be subtle in contrast to the slightly bedazzling nature of the pieces. In this way, the pieces are meant to encourage a transitioning towards the other side of both a personally and historically 'over-rendered' argument, to a new vocabulary that myself and the viewer may know is there, but is yet to know how to engage.