Julie Himel will be present for an artist's talk on Saturday, September 9, 2023, at 2pm at the Foster/White Gallery.

Julie Himel’s vivid paintings push the genre of landscape into striking, dreamlike abstractions, often with an element of nature's unruliness, decay, or sublime disorder. Exploring ideas of space and encounter in which people are not directly present, her paintings present opportunities to step into portraits of natural spaces, often with highly unorthodox or 'unnatural' colors. Himel uses bold, active strokes with both brush and palette knife, with generous application of brightly saturated layers of oil and acrylic paint to create richly textural surfaces.

This series of work is about the natural environment and our current relationship to it. It is an ode to what we know and what we knew; a knowing that we are stewards of both. These heavily textured, mixed media landscape paintings reach for sources of light. Their unorthodox chromatic play invites the viewer to enter them both experientially and emotionally. The paintings represent present and future, and presence and absence at once. They allude to your feet being grounded a step before the picture plane, and yet the human figure is not within view. The quiet solitude presented is an offering of meditation and respect. It is a longing for connection and a call for symbiosis.

(Julie Himel)

Julie Himel received a Diploma of Fine Art from Langara College, Vancouver, BC; a BFA Honours Degree from York University, Toronto, ON; and a Graduate Diploma from the Toronto School of Art, Toronto, ON. Her work has been exhibited across North America, recently being featured in digital exhibitions with Visionary Projects, New York, NY; the I Like Your Work Podcast, and the TD Thor Wealth Management Juried Exhibition: Quest for the Environment, Quest Art, Midland, ON. Himel’s paintings are included in private and public collections across the world, such as The University of Calgary, Calgary, AB; Westfield State University, Westfield, MA; the Armenian Community Centre Art Collection, Toronto, ON and several corporate collections.