Julia Lockie

In Julia Lockie’s paintings, one becomes immediately aware of intricate and patterned surfaces that stand between the viewer and the support, whether wood or canvas.  What one sees are barriers, chain-link fencing, walls, and protruding nails, for example.  Sometimes the barriers start to disintegrate.  The grid collapses; the burlap unravels; holes appear, the mirror shatters.  The surfaces are somewhat disquieting; these are not carefree paintings.  Behind the barriers, there is an atmospheric quality to the paint application, creating beautiful but ambiguous spaces.  The content of the works obviously lies in the patterning on top, as though the artist is unsure of or uncomfortable with what may exist beyond.  The space in Descent is dark and confining.  Minutes or hours or years may tick by as the walls slowly dissolve into blackness, yet one is still held.  In the wallpaper painting, the pattern is attractive and somehow familiar, but it accompanies soft marks resembling unappealing, unwelcoming stains.  In Similitude, the mirror has the illusion of being cracked, yet is intact.  The images and distortions collaged on the surface block one’s reflection, however, making self-examination difficult.  Perhaps it is the juxtaposition of barriers and inaccessible spaces that gives the works meaning.

In the paintings there are frequent references to home through the use of symbolic domestic images such as wallpaper, teapots, and mattress ticking.  The use of varied materials suggests the same, lace, burlap, toothpicks and thread.  These are uncomfortably paired with suggestions of enclosure, loss of order and control, obsession, and destruction.  The figure is apparent, though never completely.  One sees hands, partial faces and bodies and a child with no head.  There is something visceral in the work, as well, with paint applications that suggest skin and blood, blood vessels and stains.  There are repeated references to the grid and geometry, corners and unusual spaces, holes that lead to nothingness and stairways that lead to nowhere, upside down words which can’t be read, number sequences and tallies of who knows what.  There is a disconcerting feeling of managing chaos, of a world coming unglued, of a loss of control.

Perhaps as a counter to the content of the work, a sense of control may be regained in the meticulous techniques used by the artist.  Julia Lockie makes hundreds of miniature tally marks on the wall in Descent.  The dissolving grid pattern in Self-Portrait from 1998 and the lettering in the 1999 diptych literally represent hours of painting, yet in metaphorical terms, they represent obsession, a strategy to maintain control.  The same can be said of the working techniques, and the finickiness of the winding, weaving, and pulling of threads in fabric.  Often the paint is repeatedly scratched and scored.  A detailed stencil of the wallpaper is produced to recreate the pattern precisely in the painting.  There is a sense of the importance of the making of paintings, of time passing, of investment of energy and self and thought.  But there is also a sense of avoidance of the inevitable, the breaking of the barriers and an exploration of what may lie beyond.

Egress I

Barrier Studies I

Barrier Studies II

Barrier Studies III

Descent

Similitude

Egress II

Monolith III

Monolith II

Monolith I

Negative Feedback

Revelation

Revelation Left Panel

Revelation Right Panel

Syntax in Blue

San Sanctum

Veneer

Tautology