From May 25 to August 22, Next Stage Arts Gallery shows paintings by Julia Jensen in a show call “Lay of the Land”
Artist Statement: Julia Jensen
I have been painting landscapes for years drawing on my experiences living in Vermont and Nantucket. Landscape gives me a foothold on the path to an interior experience of art. At root all painting is about expression of direct experience. Paintings exist at the meeting ground between the external world and one’s internal, emotional, and spiritual responses to it. For me, landscape is the perfect point of access for this exploration.
I have been working with oil paint for many years, encaustic however is something new. Encaustic is a medium comprised of beeswax and damar resin. This wax medium gives the surface added dimension. The depth is actual, physical depth. Because the wax can be melted again and again, it is almost as if the surface is never fully determined. I can go back in and rework, scrape back, re-melt. This ability to manipulate infinitely gives me the feeling of working outside of time, or of entering a timeless realm.
Julia Jensen lives and works in Vermont and Nantucket with her husband and two children.