Julie STAFFORD
MY ART
My art allows me to look deeper into my observations and interpret them through photography and painting. By sharing my works I invite you to see and feel what touches my heart and makes my soul sing.
You have to let your emotions get involved in your art and photography to fully comprehend the meaning of what your eyes are recording.
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ARTIST STATEMENT
My art is a result of my intense curiosity to know more about my physical and spiritual world. Through my writing, photography, and large scale acrylic paintings, my inquisitiveness leads me to explore that which existing physics and mathematics cannot explain. For example, the concept of synchronicity fascinates me. I'm on a journey to discover what role synchronicity plays in my evolution. Through my art I am attempting to come up with an explanation for the occurrence of highly improbable coincidences between events where there is no causal link but there is meaning to me. Through my camera lens I challenge myself to find the angle not so obvious and then work with multiple resources to distort, manipulate and change what I have captured to make unique art. Painting with acrylics offers me a totally different experience to what my camera and editing applications offer me. Using thick layers of vibrant acrylics I aim to capture your attention and invite you into my unexpected and unexplainable experiences.
WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE STUDIO?
PHOTOGRAPHY
After promising myself, and several clients that I would, the pandemic lockdowns and isolation was the catalyst for finally opening my fine art prints shop. My original fine art prints are created from my travels and general observations of life photography library, and from my acrylic paintings too. Multiple images across both mediums are sometimes manufactured into creating one unique image and therefore film grain and blur are purposefully manipulated to give my prints more of an aged art effect than a clear photograph effect. Each print has different size options and only10 prints of each size will ever be available. When you order a print you will receive the print number that follows the last print sold beginning from number 1-10. Printed on ILLFORD GALERIE TEXTURED COTTON RAG 310gsm, using inkjet printing to create the finest original art image, the result is unsurpassed colour depth using inks that meet the most stringent archival standards. They also set the international standard in fine art print image quality. Prints are ready for framing and can be shipped anywhere in the world. Prints are signed, numbered and will arrive with a certificate of authentication.
PAINTING
Currently, I'm working on a suite of acrylic paintings that tell the small stories within the bigger story of my memoir - 'The Seagull's Wife'. Trying to make sense of all the strange coincidences that collided after my husband’s passing, I wanted to pay homage to the seagulls that opened my eyes to a world beyond where I existed.
Though it would be easy to assume my story began just days after my husband’s passing, when I discovered a disorientated seagull on my beach house balcony, it could just as easily have started on the terrace of a villa in Santorini when a seagull captured my attention for reasons I couldn’t explain then, and still can’t today. Or, perhaps my story began in a taxi when the taxi driver, Rahul, shared a touching story that his mother told him about why thousands of seagulls fly low on the holy Ganges River. At the time he shared his simple story with me, I could never have imagined how his words would change the course of my life forever.
Inspired by the stories in my art I hope others who have experienced coincidences just too coincidental and who have questioned the possible meaning behind such experiences will feel inspired to share their stories and let us together examine a world beyond our current knowing.
Each piece of my art shares an extraordinary synchronistic moment that took me on a journey through love, loss, grief and defining my way forward to build a new life. My new memoir, 'The Seagull's Wife' ' is my platform to share that which is unexpected, unexplainable yet in its telling it opens the doors to ask questions so that we might know more in an ever evolving world. My thought-provoking seagull stories (original works on canvas and prints) invite you to look deeply into your everyday experiences to find those colliding events (too coincidental to ignore) that connect us to our bigger story.
BELIEVING IN SEAGULLS'
a sensory experience of colour, texture and story telling on canvas
If you would like to know more about my BELIEVING IN SEAGULLS series
please reach out on the contact form provided below