View on Canadian Art

I came across the work of artist Julie Gladstone when I was perusing the aisles of the Artist Project for potential artists to showcase on Artbomb.

Artist Julie Gladstone. All images: VoCA

I immediately liked the unconventional colour in her work, lots of pale minty colours jolted alive with fluorescent spray paint and then brought together with strips of striped black and white. They look a bit like maps, and a bit like quilts.

When she came to see me about participating in Artbomb, (her work will be up shortly) we discussed me stopping by her studio. She rents the main floor of a house downtown, and I thought you’d like a little glimpse of her work in progress:

A view into her studio.

A large, dark painting.

And a large, pale one.

You can see quite a bit of texture in her mixed media work (which also often includes nails and spraypaint), and she explained to me that she applies paint skins (the dried surface of paint) as she builds up the work.

She begins with several colours of paint poured on board, achieving a kind of Abstract Expressionist style, which she then disguises with more paint, leaving parts that she likes showing through. The paintings end up being very layered. The road map analogy seems appropriate if you think of roads as being laid down and bits of earth showing through in between.

Her paints.

The palette.

Gladstone paints with both oil and acrylic, but as she told me (and I think I’ve got this right) oil paint on top of acrylic is archival, but the reverse is not.

A work in progress.

Paint sticks.

Two small works on a mantlepiece.

Storage.

One last piece..