Julie Elliot

posted November 2008

This article appeared in Okanagan Arts, Fall 2008

Metaphors of Meaning - The Art of Julie Elliot

In recent years, my art practise has been to print found objects on my etching press and then use those monoprints as the first layer of my paintings. So rather than use paint to block out shapes and colours on a blank white canvas, I use printed papers to start the painting. I do this because I like the effect of the paper edges and I like working with the patterns and textures that are printed. There is a sense of surprise that is engaging. Using found objects also connects regular life with my art practise. On a walk through our orchard, I’ll be excited to find a scrap of frayed rope that will inspire a series of birds and nests paintings. As I go through my day I see ordinary things and wonder how they can be used in my studio.

This type of wondering was learned as a child. My mother was always taking on projects that required ingenuity and fearlessness. We weren’t a family who headed off to the art gallery or museum but we were encouraged to be inventive and we were allowed time and space for our own creations. Value was placed on “making it yourself” and I have memories of long summer holidays where we built elaborate worlds from whatever we could find. We built some amazing things with very little. I realize now that the value that was placed on doing it yourself and doing it your own way was my earliest art training.

My formal art training was at Okanagan College where I received a Diploma of Fine Arts (Honors) in 1989. Looking back, I think the best advice I received came during a life drawing class. The instructor watched me overwork 5 versions of the model on a single sheet of paper and remarked, “Julie, you work quickly and you’re very inventive. It would be a good practise for you to do five drawings instead of just one.” The advice to work on more than one thing was excellent. Over the years, I’ve learned that each painting has its own pace – its own timing – and it’s easier to respect that timing if I spread my energy over several paintings. I might have to wait awhile to know what’s needed for a piece to be done. Having many paintings underway helps me be patient and not rush a painting into completion.

“How do you know when a painting is done?” is a question I’m often asked. Because I don’t start with a sketched out plan for a painting, the knowledge that a painting is finished comes from a different place. The artist with the sketch knows the painting is finished when the sketch has been fully realized. My way of working evolves through a series of steps that build on each other without knowing what will come later. For example, I will know that my eye is staying in an area because it’s dark and dominant. I might lighten that area or paint even more darkness in order to find a visual balance. Then another area will call out for attention. It’s an intuitive process where I work back and forth, building up and breaking down the surface and layering paint until one day I walk into my studio and there it is – done. It feels right and I know there’s nothing more to do.

Ideas and themes also help me know what’s next and how to get there. One series that is ongoing is called “Viriditas” and these are paintings inspired by the 12^th Century mystic named Hildegard of Bingen. She believed that nature has a greening power that exalts the divine and she called this power “Viriditas.” Her ideas have inspired me to create images of trees, leaves, roots, seed shapes and circles to explore ideas about connectedness, wholeness and balance. Circles are rich in meaning for me: the Creator (who has no beginning and no end), the earth, the sun, the moon, and life cycles that repeat without interruption. I’m aware that viewers won’t necessarily be aware of these meanings but my images come from the natural world and I trust viewers to respond in their own way, from their own experiences. The same is true for my paintings of galloping horses. To me they are metaphors for life as a journey; one of constant change. I use running horses to investigate aspects of this journey – what it means to cross borders, travel through difficult times, move on and seek transformation. Lately, I’ve painted the figure and she stands in archways which signal a threshold between one place and another.

Archways, rooted trees, galloping horses, circles – they’re metaphors and symbols that help me paint and find meaning along the way, but I don’t intend to set out a message that is supposed to be interpreted and understood by the viewer. In fact, the need to interpret can stand in the way of a viewer’s full response to my or anyone’s art. I don’t believe there needs to be an interpretation of art at all. Paintings have a visual language that is itself and need not be explained with words. It’s a language of colour, space, movement, texture, line, shape and a whole lot more. My understanding of this language is continually evolving and changing. This visual language allows me to say things I couldn’t otherwise say and it helps me know things I wouldn’t otherwise know.

I’ve developed an art process that combines painting and printmaking in a way that feels entirely open-ended with limitless possibilities. Ideas come from finding things, from daily journaling, from what my teenage children say and do, from living in Oyama with our orchards and gardens, from talking with friends and reading good books, from walking in the hills and listening to CBC Radio Two. It’s compelling to work in my studio and see what, out of all this living, will arrive in my paintings.

Madhouse Open House - February 21, 2008

She was wearing a beautiful suit complete with paisley silk shawl artfully draped across her shoulders. Paintbrush loaded, she stood back and aimed, sending streaks of black paint all over the canvas, all over her hand and all over the floor. I scanned her suit for acrylic paint (that would permanently set in a few minutes) but she was too excited to notice. Her exhilaration epitomized the spirit of the collaborative painting that I facilitated at the Madhouse Open House last night. Earlier in the evening I had set up a blank canvas and set out mixed paints and various sized brushes. After an official welcome, Mayor Sharon Shepherd was invited to make the first mark – a confident stroke of ultramarine blue – and from then on I was busy replenishing colours for the invited guests who gathered around the easel, fascinated as the painting evolved under each individual’s attention. I was struck with how joyful and confident people were as they selected their paintbrush and loaded the colour they wanted.
          “Orange. It needs orange down in that corner.”
          “That, believe it or not, is an Irish harp.”
          “Oh, someone added yellow to my sun. It’s getting bigger!”
After 2 hours of painting (often with 2 or 3 people working at once) the finished canvas was auctioned off, with proceeds going to the Kelowna Women’s Shelter. Many people were there on their way home from work and it struck me that collaborative painting could be the new way to unwind. Without judgement, self-imposed pressure, anxiety to perform – without all the expectations we place on ourselves and art – painting can be simply a lot of fun. Thanks to Madhouse for inviting me to facilitate this uniquely creative experience!

September 13, 2007

This article appears in the catalogue for "Nexus: Histories and Communities" an exhibition of works from the permanent collection of the Kelowna Art Gallery in celebration of the gallery's 30th anniversary. To learn more about the exhibition go to their website at www.kelownaartgallery.com

"I sat in the darkened theatre at the KLO campus listening to Vicky Marshall, one of the visiting artists who had come to speak to our Visual Forum class. She fit my idea of what an artist should look like: black clothes, short spiky hair, military type boots. I was impressed and intimidated. She was visiting the Fine Arts Department because she was a rising star; one of the “Young Romantics” who had shown at the Vancouver Art Gallery to critical acclaim. I assumed she knew all the right people and was invited to all the right places. Vicky talked about her art and while she showed slides I took notes and grew even more impressed and intimidated. Her painting style was raw and gestural – lurid at times – every colour thrown together (her words) with thick oil paint laid down and left alone. She said her inspiration came from going out into her surroundings and painting whatever she saw. So we critiqued paintings of city night life, prostitutes, alleyways, stairwells and busy streets. I thought this powerful art could happen only in a major center. It confirmed my growing belief that to get anywhere as an artist you had to move to the city. You had to be anywhere but Oyama (where I lived) growing apples for a living (what we did).

Then I heard that the Kelowna Art Gallery had acquired a Vicky Marshall painting for its permanent collection. I was excited to see the real thing - not a slide - and "Apple Tree” lived up to my expectations. I was struck by the sheer power, immediacy and energy of it. Yet, I asked myself, what could be more common and ordinary than an apple tree? I recalled Maria Rilke’s advice in Letters to a Young Poet, “If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place.” All the power of Marshall’s city images was there in front of me, only now it was the riches of my world she was calling forth.

I felt that “Apple Tree” was a sign and writing about it now, twenty years later, I realize that this “acquisition of the permanent collection” helped me go forward with the belief that my own reality would be enough - and that has made every difference."

The following is an artist statement for my "Viriditas" Paintings, an ongoing series of images inspired by Hildegard of Bingen.

“O most noble greening power,

rooted in the sun,

shine in dazzling serenity – a sphere

that no earthly excellence can comprehend.

You are enclosed

in the embrace of divine mysteries.

You blush like the dawn,

and burn like a flame of the sun.”

from the musical composition “De Virginibus: O noblissima viriditas”

This poem was written 900 years ago by Hildegard von Bingen, a 12^th Century abbess, healer, writer, composer and painter. It reflects her belief that nature has a “greening power” that exalts the divine. She had her own mysterious language and used the term viriditas to describe this greening power. Her ideas have been a source of inspiration for my series of “Viriditas” mixed media paintings. I use organic imagery to express ideas about being grounded and connected. Each painting is divided into two planes with a horizon. The top of the horizon contains a fruit tree (or trees or leaf) and the lower section is abstracted with organic elements including root shapes, suggestions of seeds, leaf shapes and spheres.

August 31, 2007

Life is chaotic and complicated right now - absolutely everything is behind. Yet. Yet when everyone left I came out to work. I've been reading what I wrote last year at this time and found a timely quote from Stephanie Dowrick in "Forgiveness and Other Acts of Love."

When people say they have no time, what they mean is no time to pause, to collect themselves, to dream, to think something through, to consider if what is being asked of them or what they are asking of themselves is fair, just, humane or loving. Does it expand their life or contract it? Does it put them more in touch with who or what they really care about? Or does it take them farther away?

I'm especially grateful for my art practise as I read this. Taking time to make images - building them slowly and at the pace of knowing - I have a chance to pause and collect myself. Painting helps me live life fully rather than too full.