Featured Artist Juliana Coles

Juliana Coles’ mixed media art is not preconceived, but spontaneously created through a unique layering process that uncovers stories in each piece. Visit her website to view more of her work.

 

 

As a student at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco in the early 90’s, my education was influenced by the Post-Modern Bay Area Figuration artists and the New Contemporary Figurative Movement.

 

 

My work itself was inspired by German and Neo-expressionists as well as the Pop Artists who were revolting against pretentious or “High Brow” Art.

 

 

This was the time of Desert Storm and the Rodney King trial when we took to the streets and were arrested under martial law.

 

 

While San Francisco was a mecca of social activism, I was intensely engaged with the second wave feminist ideal that the personal is the political.

 

 

My art exhibits a raw and visceral investigation into personal reality where, as an epileptic, seizures interrupt recall and alienate concrete memory.

 

 

Beginning with the figure and adding handwritten narrative, my painting style attempts to archive a fragmented past through the radical events of my time.

 

 

This mixed media layering practice is necessary for uncovering the stories that are at the core of every piece. I am a visual storyteller acknowledging dark wounds to the land and her inhabitants, and I remain true to my expression.

 

 

Based on my experience as an artist living a life subject to seizure, I developed and taught “Visual Journaling,” a process that combines journal writing with art making in a book for self-dialogue. I have been teaching this process around the world since 1992.

 

 

While my travels have greatly influenced my work, the high desert of Albuquerque, New Mexico resonates with my soul. I make my home and studio in the North Valley between the Sandia mountains and the west mesas.

 

 

This parched land is a lifeline and creates a calming base to return to from the darkness and otherworldliness of epilepsy. I feel safe here, and thrive in this beautifully barren landscape.

 

Artist Juliana Coles invites you to follow her on Facebook, Instagram and her Online Workshop.

 

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