Julia Harris

Born in Montréal, Julia completed her BA in 1974 at McGill University, majoring in Art History. Afterwards she acquired her BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. After completing her studies, Julia worked in printmaking at La Guilde Graphique in Montréal and later in book design at McGill Queen’s University Press. For much of her subsequent working career she was a partner in a Toronto–based design firm; becoming principal of her own design firm in1993. She has taught design at the Ontario College of Art and Design and has sat on juries for both the Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario College of Art.

Recently, Julia completed a series of paintings that focused on “the spiritual essence of a place during a moment in time”. The work develops through a series of watercolours and also from a memory bank of landscapes “ingested” inside the subconscious that emerge as the painting proceeds. The images that appear are subliminal; the subconscious abstracts nature. The painting process is an attempt to capture the key moments of ingestion and then to decode them to recreate the landscape’s secret spiritual essence or DNA.

The paintings are empty of human activity allowing us to focus instead on the intangible infinities of horizon; sea or earth, sky and air. The light and handling of the colour in many of the pieces is from the ‘between times’ of day; not night, not broad daylight but some where in between, obscured by atmospheric mists, fog or clouds, a time of possibilities for connection with greater mysteries of the spirit. Looking at the pieces becomes a meditation, a stilling of voices, and hopefully a return to some connection with nature.