Julia Berkman (b. 1976, Boston, Massachusetts) is an abstract artist who makes colorful, patterned, gestural paintings. She attended Swarthmore College and completed her MFA at Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts. She has been exhibiting in group and solo exhibitions since. Her work has been featured in Studio Visit and New American Paintings. She has had solo exhibitions at SOHO20 Gallery in New York and the Fred Snitzer Gallery in Miami. Florida. She has also had solo exhibits at Somerville Community Access Television and Gann Academy in Waltham, Massachusetts.
She has participated in group exhibitions at Site: Brooklyn in Brooklyn, New York, SJ Art Consulting in Haverill, Massachusetts, 440 Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, the Maake Gallery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the UForge Gallery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. She has also been part of group exhibitions at the SOHO20 Gallery in New York, the Domo Gallery in Summit, New Jersey, and the Boston University Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts. Her work is owned by collectors in Miami, New York, and Germany. She attended Chautauqua School of Art and the Vermont Studio Center. She received an Individual Cultural Sector Recovery Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work was recently reviewed in the online journal Art Feature Express. She currently lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My abstract paintings push the boundaries of color, form, and pattern. I have always been in love with color and pattern. As a child, I would draw tiny figures with colorful, patterned outfits. Drawing these figures allowed me to improvise.This gravitation towards improvisation carried on as I moved from childhood into adulthood. I never begin a painting or drawing with a pre-determined outcome. Rather, each mark builds upon the previous mark and so on. I begin a pattern a certain way, and it can transform into something totally different. The same applies to my use of color. I can begin a painting with blue, black, and brown, and it can end up as yellow and purple by the end. This tendency towards invention suggests a feeling of transformation and change, as well as curiosity.
A resolve to question my decisions lies at the center of my work. If something isn’t working a certain way, why not try something totally different? This resolve to question has an element of playfulness to it. I don’t want my paintings to feel stagnant; I want them to feel vivid and alive. I have always used thick brushstrokes and painted with a heavy hand. My use of mark and gesture contribute towards giving my work an energized feeling. I want to forefront the tactility of paint and give my paintings a personalized touch, as if they were extensions of my body and myself. Likewise, the edges of the forms are often slightly uneven. My paintings are rife with just-off geometries and uneven surfaces. These variations reflect a sense of evolution and change, as well as imperfection. I want my paintings to embody imperfection and change, yet remain cohesive.
Throughout my work is a commitment to abstraction. I express my emotions through my use of color, form, and mark. For the past few years I have been struggling with Long Covid and Depression. The compositional and gestural variations in my paintings are a metaphor for the uncertainty I feel in my recovery. I want to highlight that struggle and change can coexist. Stability and instability aren’t opposite, they’re interdependent. Just as a dark, muddy color can sit next to a vibrant hue, lightness and dark can exist together. Above all of this there is a sense of hope—hope that I can recover, hope that I can continue to create complex, multi-layered pieces that speak to the universal experiences of struggle and change.
