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JULIE LAZARUS - ARTIST
Julie Lazarus
Acqua Alta Dopo D, 2020
Julie Lazarus
Venice-Flooding-18A, 2020
Julie Lazarus - Acqua Alta
Painting
My painting style is based on the landscape and architecture. Landscape painting must
take into account color, form, light and movement. Paintings of architecture or buildings
take into account geometric forms and angles. My window lines and forms are found in my
glass sculptures and paintings.
Most of my new work is a result of my travels to Italy over the past seven years. My
observations of the amazing light reflected off the water and buildings of Venice and
Murano has been an inspiration for my work. My newest works, however, are inspired by
the intriguing floral growth of the trumpet vines and the grapevines that grow in
abundance throughout Venice, and by the tree limbs that appear to frame the vistas
of the landscape.
During my visits to the Veneto, I sit beneath the arbors, surrounded by the flowering
vines and sketch my surroundings. These influences become the shapes and colors for my
paintings and for my blown glass produced during my visits to Murano. Later, these
sketches become paintings when I return to my Fort Worth, Texas studio. From the latest
sketches, I have created the Giardini series—inspired by Giardini della Biennale
translating my sketches of the landscape into abstract work.
The new paintings and the new glass, the Giardini series, contrast colorful spaces
within bold black, blue or red lines. The lines become patterns that break the softness
of the blue sky above, or the color of a building in the background. The shapes created
by the positive and negative spaces become more organic and act as a visual aid to move
the viewer's eye across the canvas or around and throughout the glass pieces.
Technique
I prefer opaque, light-absorbing surfaces, and I use at least four coats of bright-white
gesso on the canvas to achieve this. This enables color to reflect and bounce off the
white ground of the canvas. I paint many transparent layers of luminous paint on top of
the white ground. In the same way, I layer color throughout my sculptural glass vessels.
I use mostly oil paint on canvas or wood, on handmade Japanese paper and heavyweight
French BFK Rives paper. I buy my paint pigments when I travel in Italy and France and
also at home in Fort Worth, Texas.
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