Julia Flanagan

OPENING/MEET THE ARTIST Saturday 24 May, 11am – 5pm ALL WELCOME

MEET THE ARTIST Saturday 14 June 11am-2pm ARTIST TALK 1pm

Kindness on view at Straitjacket by Ahn Wells
“Everything I Wonder” is a happy, bright, mesmerising exhibition that leaves you feeling uplifted and energised. Flanagan is a master of shape manipulation and pattern formation. Her innate ability to conjure circles, stripes, parallelograms and wonky lines into perfectly harmonious images is staggering and the reason why her sculptures and paintings frequently make the art prize finalist list.  

Flanagan has long been committed to the creation of pattern.  Her works were previously informed by her domestic interior, the urban landscape and surrounding architecture. Over the years these influences have paved the way to the creation of her own personal library of shapes, motif and forms that instead of referencing the physical world are now concerned with how we feel and how we are affected by colour and formation of pattern.

With this collection of shapes, she is free to go about creating works that ask more philosophical questions and give the viewer more of an opportunity to place their own experiences of the world around them onto the works. Thus, forming a personal connection to the individual pieces.  Each work evoking a sense of joy and happiness.  With the overall exhibition allowing the viewer to reflect on their own human kindness.

Q & A
How do you choose your subject matter? 
Most recently my works have moved away from looking at the immediate world around me, using shapes, form and colours found in my domestic interior, the urban landscape and architecture. Still using familiar motifs, my paintings and sculptures now draw on my personal library of shapes and language of colour and forms that have been developing in my work over the years. In this series, I’ve been contemplating ideas of contentment, joy and happiness, not referencing the tangible physical world , rather , inquisitively reflecting on  how humans feel and how colours, shapes, patterns and forms can be potentially be uplifting, ruminative and harmonious. 

What techniques do you use? 
My paintings take shape through making many drawings. With this series the background painting in most of the works have come from a series of miniature colourful pattern designs / drawings intended to be used for repeated textile designs. Over these backgrounds I plan a layering of intertwined shapes , colours and forms. I build up multiple layers of acrylic paint. The shapes and forms layered over the patterned background are created by using painters tape to form straight lines and clearly defined shapes and edges. I work often from drawings when taping, sometimes penciling the areas in that I want to section off but sometimes I ‘ draw ‘ with the tape, applying it directly to the board in a drawing – like manner, looking back and forth to my concept sketches as a guide to form the areas and shapes. 

Who are your influences? 
I have a wide range of artist who I admire. I find excitement in anything with colour, looseness and movement. Abstract painters of course are an influence. Two recent exhibitions at the AGNSW, Kandinsky and Australian Painter Lesley Dumbrell, truely blew my mind. Hillma Af Klimt’s work is inspiring, the colours and scale! I love the work of a number of contemporary American painters including Kellie Ferris,  Matt Kleberg and Paul Wackers to name a few. Melbourne painter, Emily Ferretti’s work is stunning. I love looking at the details and patterns in quilting and patterns and colours in vintage and modern textiles. Designer Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis group are also an influence. There are so many more …