bio

Julia Schwartz is a visual artist working in painting, installation, and paper. Deeply influenced by years of psychoanalytic study and practice, her paintings straddle figuration and abstraction. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including shows in LA, New York, London, Amsterdam, and Hudson. Schwartz’s curatorial projects include States of Being at the Torrance Art Museum (2015) and Black Mirror at Charlie James Gallery (2017). Her work has been featured in numerous publications including New American Paintings, Two Coats of Paint, Post Road, Huffpost, and the New York Times. Schwartz has been a member of the artist-run project The Binder of Women. After 20 years in Santa Monica, she now lives and works in El Cerrito, California.

statement

Art depicts my situation—the geographic, the emotional, the existential, the state of the world- and how I make sense of it. These days that means trying to make sense of the senselessness of the everyday world and its outsized “seismic disasters” including personal loss and grief as well as profound political and cultural fragmentation.

I have always liked Keats’ idea of “negative capability;” this is quite compatible with being self-taught, although my colleagues remind me that all of us are always learning on the job. Without benefit or burden of formal “technique” in art-making, I am comfortable with doubt, uncertainty, the freedom to explore materials and methods, and an infinite freedom to fail.