A SPRING curated show which invites Bristol based artist Julia Maleeva.
She told us, “My painting is journey between three seas: the Mediterranean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Black Sea. The sources for my works are coming from my travels around Southern France, Cornwall and Bulgarian Black Sea coast. What makes these places special for me is the light, which is very distinctive and specific. These places are around water, but the colours differ because of the magic of light.
The attempt to bridge the colours of Provence, Cornwall and Black Sea coast in Bulgaria, has been a journey between sea, wind, roads, emotions, ink sketches, canvas, paint, light and a viewer. Art for me is a deconstruction process of layers of paint waiting to be scraped and then layered back in a different perspective, just to show something more interesting. The way to go backwards discovers to me a unique story, like a detective game to find clues from the past.”
Working in oils, Julia is fascinated with the interplay of different perspectives and dimensions, amalgamation of techniques. Exploring two-dimensional relationship with form, colour and texture has always been her main interest. The challenge to maintain the right balance between graphic lines and colours.
Influenced by her architectural background often the protagonist is a forgotten old building or a sleepy bridge.
“I use cold wax as one of the main ingredients in my paintings, which allows me to create unique textures. Working only with palette knives I often add to the premixed oil/wax substance - Cornish sand, chopped sea weeds, old tea leaves or just scrapes of old paint from my palette. The whole scraping process involves my imagination to reuse everything again into the painting and be able to create new kind of “sustainable” art. Small bobbles are one of my signatures, made from scrapes and different mixtures. The wax also helps me to establish more translucency to the oil colours. I am ultimately on a journey to create a new fusion of dry point and oil painting, wrapped in cold wax.”
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Julia was born in Bulgaria in 1974. After receiving her BA in Fine Arts and MA in Architecture in Sofia, Bulgaria, she went to USA where she completed Postgraduate specialisation in Architectural Heritage in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This work was commissioned by the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record and involved ink hand sketches and drawings of historic bridges and factories. The papers from this project are kept in the American Library of Congress.
In her more than 20 years career as an architect and interior designer, Julia has successfully completed many projects, residential conversions and renovations, and interior design projects in Bulgaria, UK, Romania, Germany. In the last few years she has returned to fine art full time and is working in her own studio in Clifton, Bristol.
Inspired by the works of Willem De Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Sammy Peters since she has been living in USA, Julia describes her style as abstract expressionism.
Most of Julia’s work is inspired by her travels around the South West of England, French Provence and rural Bulgaria, involving a lot of drawing, sketching, en plein air painting. She explores her subjects in an involved process of painting, drawing and applying wax to the surface.
Julia is represented by Carina Haslam Gallery and had very successful shows in London, Singapore and New York. Her art is also shown at galleries in the UK, and features in private collections in the UK, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and Bulgaria.
Julia is Associate Member of Penwith Society of Artists. She has won the People’s Choice Award at Clifton Open Summer Exhibition 2021.
Julia is a qualified General Aviation pilot. She used to own a two-seat aircraft and loves to fly in her spare time.