Studio Visit: Julia Kottal

We checked in with Julia about her works in the upcoming exhibit Endless Planes and were presented with a question: "Would you like some wine?"

This question perfectly outlines Julia and her artwork. Inviting and casual, the world outside falls away as you're carefully led into her  isolated travels through paint, texture, plains, mountains, and the lake. Her personality is etched into the paint by way of brush stokes, and the coloring and composition pull you into a serene landscape of nothing-and-everythingness.

What a joy it was to chat about her new works. The love for intended seclusion and the act of painting is felt and seen. Read more below for the first peek.

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There's so much romance in her studio. If you read about a painter's atelier in a novel, I'm sure this is how your mind's eye would manifest it: warm wood cabinets and stacks of books, trinkets from adventures traveled and being surrounded by windows, letting all that natural light in. There's wine and treats available next to the paint brushes and palette knives. One could surely spend hours in this space perusing the well worn pages of art books and talking about art history among other inspirations.

Some first thoughts: the colors drive the scene and only touch gingerly on the idea of landscape. Each work transports your mind inward, imagining the vista and diving into the colors producing memories and other associations. You can read the paint- and possibly, lingering long enough, taste the perfect blueberry color in the sky. You're a voyeur, alone, at the bottom of the mountain and can feel the mist rolling off the top from the early morning without seeing it.

These new works capture the spirit of natural spaces and Julia expertly recreates the moment in time as she assembles the emotions felt within them.

"...landscapes that go past a definite closure, beyond the prescribed horizon. It applies to the [watercolor] of course (those are very isolated places and done plein air),  but it also applies to the oils as with no structures or figures, they are reflections or feelings of dreams or memories of distant places combined. They reflect my thoughts on color as an idea and thoughts on loneliness as a place with never ending vistas. While the oil abstracts are gestural, the encaustics & [watercolor]  are subtle,..." --Julia