Julia Whitehead

Working from her garden studio in Witham on the Hill, the study of human crowds and moving figures is the main focus of Julia’s series of paintings on display. Using a variety of photographic reference material collected on regular trips to London and other towns and cities, plus her own imagination, Julia captures the spirit of society on the move. Paintings, of whatever scale, start with a brightly coloured acrylic background onto the white canvas. The abstract nature of her background paintings often dictates which direction the final painting will go and elements of the paint layers are left to show through the overpainting to varying degrees. Oil paint is built up over several layers, sometimes wet on wet, other times the oil is allowed to dry sufficiently to paint over, often resulting in a highly textured surface which creates shadows of its own. The focus on these figure paintings originated with a fascination of the shadows cast by figures when viewed aerially. The beautiful shapes cast on pavements are generally hard to appreciate when life is moving all around but are mesmerising when freeze framed in a photograph. Equally, the patterns made by bodies moving in a crowd or seen from unusual angles, have an artistic quality of their own.”I enter into a slightly meditative state when painting, especially with the more impressionistic figurative crowd scenes. As in life, each small figure takes on a characteristic of its own and has its own individual relationship to the figures that surround it. People seem to enjoy the paintings as they see something new in them each time they look at it.”