Thursday 20 July 2017

14th Street Studios : My First Studio in New York City

Excerpt from my memoir:
14th Street, NYC

"Two dogs, a cat and an iguana (the landlord's pets) also resided in the studios on 14th Street, alongside the working artists. Marijuana plants grew in pots on the windowsill of my space.

It was a rather chaotic atmosphere, controlled by the presence of the landlord who lived on the premises with his wife. Many of the other artists who worked at the studios didn't come in until late afternoon or the evening so I usually had the space to myself during the day.

The studios were just a few blocks away from Union Square and close to the Meat Packing district, which was fast becoming a hotspot for artists with new galleries springing up all the time.

If the weather was fine, I'd walk down to the studios in the morning; if it was raining, I'd take the bus. At lunchtime, sometimes I'd go into one of the nearby lounges to buy coffee and bagels and watch the TV, relaxing on big velvet sofas.

It was the time of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and I clearly remember Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings being played out on the big screen in the bar.“

Excerpt from 'Art, Life and Everything', (unpublished memoir) by Julie Umerle, edited by Anna McNay.

To read further excerpts from my memoir, please see:

Copyright © Julie Umerle

Strange Attractor


'Strange Attractor'
Copyright: Julie Umerle
       
Excerpt from my memoir:

"In the 'Strange Attractor' paintings I had been working on up that point, the trail of the brush mark would almost disappear among accumulated layers of paint.

Yet when I hung one of my unfinished paintings at the end of the studio and looked at it from a distance, I saw something that looked rather like a horizon at the top of the canvas where I had pulled the brush. So I decided to keep that mark in the painting rather than allowing it to be lost in subsequent layers. This completely changed the space in the work.

The first paintings I made in my new studio, entitled 'Falling Slowly', explored that idea. I also changed my medium and began to use acrylic paint on its own rather than the mix of oil and acrylic that I had been using in recent years. By changing the materials I worked with, I found that the surface also changed."

Excerpt from 'Art, Life and Everything: A memoir' by Julie Umerle.




Copyright © Julie Umerle

Friday 14 July 2017

Meeting Robert Ryman

Excerpt from my memoir:
Robert Ryman

"Ryman was very unassuming, with a quiet authority. He introduced himself as Bob, shaking me by the hand as he entered my studio. He wore a suit and a pair of very cool spectacles. He was kindly and extremely modest and wanted each student to do their best whether their work was to his taste or not.


In his crit with me, Ryman talked about the value of looking at paintings in different lights (both natural and artificial) and how the interior light in a painting is very important - think how Rothko's paintings have light of their own.

Immediately upon entering my studio, Ryman asked me to turn off the spotlights so we could view my work in natural light. He observed that I already knew how to use horizontals and verticals in my compositions, and commented that he thought I would do well in New York.

He laughed when I told him one of my paintings was called 'Creep' and said I shouldn't give emotional titles to unemotional paintings. That is something I have tried never to do again."

Excerpt from 'Art, Life and Everything' (unpublished memoir) by Julie Umerle, edited by Anna McNay.


To read further excerpts from my memoir, please see:
http://julieumerle.com/memoir.htm

Copyright © Julie Umerle

Tuesday 4 July 2017

'Rewind Triptych' at APT Gallery


Delighted to exhibit my painting 'Rewind Triptych' at APT Gallery in London this summer!


'Rewind Triptych' installed as part of Creekside Open (selected by Alison Wilding)
APT Gallery, Deptford, London
8 June - 2 July 2017


Wednesday 31 May 2017

'Ten Years of Painting' at The Barbican


Excerpt from my memoir:

"My solo show at The Barbican 'Ten Years of Painting' included two large works on paper made in my last year at art school in Cornwall, alongside a range of more recent paintings and a series of charcoal and pastel works made in London. Through this exhibition I was able to identify precise developments and observe subtle shifts in my progress. It was useful to have that moment of detachment and see my paintings exhibited outside of the studio in an entirely different context. I usually showed my paintings in alternative settings but this exhibition was quite different and very mainstream.

The private view was rather formal within the corporate surroundings of The Barbican. The bar attendant, in her uniform of black and white, dispensed drinks from a table covered by a crisp white linen cloth. The guests who came to the private view, perhaps bemused by their surroundings, sipped wine from tall stemmed glasses, talking quietly to each other.

This survey of my paintings came at a timely point in my career. I realised just how hard I had worked over those ten years and how much time and effort I had invested in my paintings. I could only hope that at last I had made a breakthrough."


Excerpt from 'Art, Life and Everything' (unpublished memoir) by Julie Umerle, edited by Anna McNay.




Copyright © Julie Umerle

Thursday 18 May 2017

'Contemporary Masters from Britain'


Between the 11th July and 10th January 2018, eighty works of art drawn from the Priseman Seabrook Collection of 21st century British Painting will go on display in four Chinese art Museums for the very first time. The host institutions are the Yantai Art Museum, Artall Gallery, Nanjing, Jiangsu Art Gallery, Nanjing and the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Tianjin. Along with the exhibition, six of the exhibiting artists will go out to talk on the subject of British painting in light of the digital revolution and explore why the hand-made work of art is more relevant today than it has ever been, connecting directly as it does with the profound human need to touch, feel and mediate emotion. Because painting’s rising relevance in the 21st century is beautifully aligned with the resurgent growth of interest in vinyl records, knitting, film photography and unplugged music. In this new exhibition, we will see how painting exhibits a universal desire to connect to the real in ways which enrich us all. Between
So why is painting from the United Kingdom relevant to a Chinese audience?
When we look historically we see how Britain has nurtured some of the world’s greatest painters, from Holbein in the 16th century to Constable and Joseph Wright of Derby in the 18th, Turner and Atkinson Grimshaw in the 19th and Freud, R. B. Kitaj, Rego and Francis Bacon in 20th century. This level of excellence in the art of painting in the British Isles has continued to evolve into the 21st with a new generation of artists who have made the production of significant painting their life’s work.
In 2014 I came to realise that many of this new wave of British painters had yet to be collected with same the geographical and chronological focus of their predecessors and foreign contemporaries. So, with the help of my wife I began the process of bringing together a body of work by artists which followed the very simple criteria of being painting produced after the year 2000 within the British Isles. The painters we began collecting included European Sovereign Painters Prize winner Susan Gunn, John Moores Prize winner Nicholas Middleton, 54th Venice Biennale exhibitor Marguerite Horner, East London Painting Prize Winner Nathan Eastwood, NPG Portrait Award Winner Paula MacArthur, Griffin Art Prize exhibitor Matthew Krishanu, Birtles Prize Winner Simon Burton and Mary Webb who received a solo show at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in 2011 amongst many others.
Creating this focus has enabled us to uncover a number of significant themes which at first were hard to discern. In it we can see that painting is now expressing itself along the same lines as the slow food movement, meditation and unplugged music. Within the era of the digital revolution it offers a direct and contemplative connection with the hand-made, with real objects which mediate our emotional makeup. We see this most clearly in the fact that the paintings within the collection display no clear and consistent group narrative or movement other than being broadly realist, abstract and surrealist, and are instead an assembly of highly individualistic interpretations which offer visual interactions with the physical world. One interesting thing has however remained consistent. When we look to the past we notice how many of the greatest painters who practiced in the UK were born abroad, including Holbein, Freud and Auerbach who were born in Germany, Bacon who was from Ireland, Kitaj the USA and Rego who was born in Portugal. Indeed it is this international influence which has probably helped create such a strong and vibrant tradition in the genre in Britain and which is most reflective of our civilization as a broadly international and multi-cultural society. In the 21st century we see this strand of internationalism continuing in British painting and being signified in the collection by Monica Metsers who was born in New Zealand, Claudia Böse and Silvie Jacobi who were born in Germany, Rhonda Whithead from Australia, Laura Leahy and Julie Umerle who are from the USA, Alison Pilkington who is from Ireland and Ehryn Torrell who was born in Canada.
This role call perhaps highlights the biggest change we begin to notice in British painting, and it is the shift from the predominantly male dominance the genre experienced up to the end of the 20th century to a significant ascendancy by female practitioners. Indeed, of the 75 painters so far represented in the collection 44 are women, placing male artists in the minority. Something else I wish us to consider in looking at the works themselves, is that just as there has been a major shift in fine art practice from male to female dominance, there is now also a shift occurring in the way painting is being perceived as an art form in the light of the digital age.
Within the field the multitude of “isms” which previously made up the landscape of 20th century art have instead been replaced by the one big “ism” of the 21st century, “individualism”. In this context we may begin to think of and experience paintings not as works of art produced from the hands of specifically female or male artists, but from a group of individuals; unique, talented and united by the common bonds of time and place and a desire to connect to the elusive experience of what it is to be human. In exhibiting their work, we create international dialogue and debate between ourselves and other cultures. This is not the art of globalisation, but is instead an art of internationalism, which defines itself as the free and open exchange of ideas between all peoples for the common good.
Robert Priseman, 2017