Julia Berkman
My paintings are visual reflections of my internal emotional world. Abstraction allows me to explore the complex and layered phenomenology of my experience. I am interested in what cannot be expressed in words; the fuzzy terrain between foreground and background, presence and absence, volume and void.
Recently I have gravitated towards using a more restricted palette. Limiting my palette both narrows and widens my focus. Every color is distinctly itself yet open to change and fluctuation. A singular expanse of color is both something and nothing, and everything in between. The spaces “in between” are what inspire and motivate me in my work; the space between what we know and what we wish we knew, what we have and what we have lost, what we can say and what we don’t know how to say, and what we struggle to conceal and reveal about ourselves. My paintings are objects, living breathing entities that assert themselves, both grounded and wandering, searching for their place in the world.