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COCE 2023

Last week, I travelled to Harrisonburg, VA to attend the International Environmental Communication Association’s biennial Conference on Communication and the Environment (COCE 2023). I was humbled to share some new paintings and thoughts, and I was thrilled to present the panel discussion “Artists Dismantling the Anthropocentric Mindset,” featuring artists Austen Camille, Byron Wolfe, and Lydia Cheshewalla. (Camille, Wolfe, and Cheshewalla are all part of a larger, multi-venue exhibition that I’m curating in Philadelphia this fall titled Seeing the Anthropocene—stay tuned for more details!)

My own paintings and words were included in the group exhibition Shifting Climate: Artists Respond to the Earth in Crisis, organized by Yvonne Love. The show was physically installed at James Madison University (the site of the conference) and featured works by Rebecca Rutstein, Deirdre Murphy, Yvonne and David Love, and myself.

Throughout my time in Harrisonburg, I witnessed incredible conversations about climate change between artists, scientists, environmental activists, and communications experts, deepening my conviction in the power and utility of artists' insights at this extraordinary moment. 

Below is a reproduction of my contribution to the show, including writing that I presented as wall text.

New Configuration I, 2023, oil on canvas, 50” x 40”

My paintings reflect on current American culture while imagining new, reconfigured worlds. The compositions are loosely based on small collages that I create from photos of the different places where I've lived. 

New Configuration I and II contain a mixture of hope and foreboding. The paintings emphasize reinvention and project a sense of possibility, but they also depict human construction bluntly dominating the landscape, fracturing nature and trapping birds within isolated shards of sky. Like all of my paintings, New Configuration I and II reflect my grappling with conflicting emotions; they struggle to reconcile my hope for radical change with cynicism and feelings of attachment to familiar ways of being.

New Configuration II, 2023, oil on canvas, 50” x 40”

All of my paintings are disorienting to some degree. In earlier works, this disorientation served to reflect my own psychological experience living in this country. In recent pieces though, such as New Configuration I and II, I've been thinking of disorientation as generative. Losing one’s bearings may enable a person to re-orient herself in a fundamentally new way.

Reconstructing the Sky (left) and New Sun (right), 2023, oil on canvas, 16” x 16” each

While making New Sun and Reconstructing the Sky, I was thinking about Elizabeth Kolbert's Under a White Sky. In the book, Kolbert envisions a more sustainable future not as a romantic return to pre-industrial ways of being, but rather as a new integration of human technologies and natural systems. Kolbert suggests that, practically, we may need to intervene further into ecosystems and gene pools to mitigate the problems we've created.

BOGO, 2022, oil on canvas, 31” x 48”

BOGO interprets America as a fractured, unstable place forged by consumer culture and a modern, anthropocentric worldview. At the time that I made the painting, I was hopeful that the pandemic might create an opportunity to reshape the country in a more sustainable and equitable way. 

All of my paintings in this exhibition meditate on change. COVID-19 has transformed our world over the past three years, and climate change promises to upend everything further, either by unleashing cascading catastrophes or by forcing humans to take radical preventative action. Change is inevitable; directing it is our only hope.

Cradle at Massey Klein Gallery

Cradle, my solo exhibition at Massey Klein Gallery in New York, is now on view through April 16th. Check out the installation shots and press release below…and you can see the collages that started these paintings in the previous post!

Press Release

Julia Clift: Cradle

March 11 - April 18, 2022

Massey Klein Gallery is pleased to present Cradle, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Julia Clift. The exhibition will be on view from March 11 through April 18. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, March 12th from 4-7pm. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. For press inquiries or questions regarding works available, please email info@masseyklein.com.

Julia Clift's newest paintings included in Cradle interpret America as simultaneously a beloved homeland and a place falling apart at the seams. Her work stems from her research and lived experience in different regions of the United States, including Central Florida, the Midwest, North Carolina, and major East Coast cities. The artist uses bright, saturated colors found in neighborhood plants--from the vivid yellows of tulips and daffodils, to the electric pinks of a kanzan cherry blossom tree--to examine notions of naturalness and artificiality, and specifically, the relationship between ecology and consumer culture. Ultimately optimistic, these artworks emphasize reconstruction and imagine alternative logics, providing a sense of possibility and discovery through painterly invention.

“These paintings were all made while I was either pregnant or within the first year of my son’s life, and in the wake of my dad’s sudden, unexpected death. The paintings are steeped in thoughts about family, childhood, and how my son’s worldview is being shaped by growing up in this country.”

Clift paints from small collages composed of her own photographs, tourism advertisements, and color swatches. The imagery features personally significant places, such as Orlando, where she grew up, and suburban Philadelphia, where she currently lives. The artist combines realism, abstraction, and invention in her paintings as a method of exploring the fluid relationship between physical place and one’s mental landscape, allowing tensions and differences to exist while inevitably harmonizing within each painting. In this way, her compositions are intentionally fractured and disorienting, yet hopeful.

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Julia Clift has exhibited extensively throughout the United States, including solo exhibitions at Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University (2021), University City Arts League in Philadelphia (2017), Fleisher Art Memorial (2016) and Artspace in Raleigh, NC (2012).

Clift graduated with a BFA in Painting and English from Washington University in St. Louis in 2009 and with an MFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in 2020. The artist was selected for the Fred and Naomi Hazell Faculty Fellowship (Fleisher Art Memorial, 2016), the Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists (Maryland Institute College of Art, 2013) and the Regional Emerging Artist Residency at Artspace (Raleigh, NC, 2011). She was the recipient of the Visual Arts Grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund (2015), and the Hazel H. Huntsinger Memorial Prize in Painting (2009) and the Sorger Award (2006), both from Washington University in St. Louis. Her artwork is in the permanent collection of the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn, NY.

Massey Klein Gallery is located at 124 Forsyth St. New York, NY 10002. Gallery hours are Thursday - Sunday 12pm-5pm. To schedule a private viewing, email info@masseyklein.com.

New Collages

These collages were all made over the past couple months, while my newborn was napping or playing independently. (My studio’s in my home, conveniently right next to the nursery.) Each collage is like a blueprint for a new painting. The imagery comes from the Philly area and central Florida (where I live and where I grew up, respectively). The solid pinks, purples, and yellows match the colors of flowers that I found blooming in my neighborhood this Spring. I think it’s interesting how the colors feel artificial and/or commercial within these compositions, even though they’re lifted directly from nature.

Postpartum Journal

My son Ezra, my first child, turns 3 months old this week. During pregnancy and postpartum, I felt really inarticulate. I struggled to describe how I was feeling to family and friends, and to myself. It's difficult to put such a novel, layered, and awesome experience into words, plus the hormones made me a bit ditsy. The psychological impact of the pandemic and my dad dying unexpectedly during my third trimester also contributed, I think, to the feeling of my brain not working properly.

After the birth, I'd get little moments of clarity, when sentences formed in my mind that decently conveyed this or that aspect of my experience as a new mother. Usually it happened when I was in the shower or driving. I started collecting these sentences in a draft email on my phone, and it became a sort of postpartum journal. On the occasion of Ezzy’s 3-month birthday, and the end of my "fourth trimester," I'd like to share some of what I've written:

I vacillate between brimming with love and feeling hollow. Maybe it's just the lack of studio time.

Growing up, I absorbed the unfortunate myth that moms couldn't be real artists. In actuality, having a baby has expanded my range of feeling and given me more to draw from in the studio. It's put me in touch with a very deep and primal part of myself. My art is fed by my experiences in life, and what could possibly be a more powerful experience than birthing and raising a human being? I cherish a conversation from 4 or 5 years ago with one of my favorite musicians--she's a friend of Eric's and was staying at our place after a gig in Philly. Standing in the kitchen with our mugs of morning coffee, we talked about life and art, and I asked her how becoming a mom affected her practice. She said that it can slow you down but ultimately makes the work richer.

6 weeks postpartum, I realize that I can lie on my stomach again. It feels delicious. You can't lie on your stomach when you're pregnant. And afterward, my breasts were too painful from engorgement and clogged ducts, my nipples like open sores. I remember in the shower having to hold my hands like awnings over them, shielding them from the pelting water. During the day I'd find myself walking around hunched, curling my back out of self-protective instinct.

I didn't realize what it meant to have my body to myself until after I'd shared it for 10 months with my son. (It's hard to appreciate something you've never lost.) When I quit breastfeeding, it was liberating.

It hits me in waves--the magnitude of it. I have a son. Not just a change to my daily tasks, but a son.

I imagined that the love would feel large. Mostly it just feels deep, like it comes from deep within my body.

Today I took my first bath since being pregnant. As I lowered myself in the water, an unexpected sadness touched me--where I used to see a taught and round stomach, now it was deflated, un-special. I felt alone, too. I was used to sharing baths with Ezzy. He'd hunch up by my ribs, startled by the heat, and I'd watch him play under my skin while I soaked.

Having a baby is both the most miraculous thing and the most ordinary. It's a revelation when, at the grocery store, I realize that most of the women around me have probably done it, too. There's something strange about how we're all dealing or have dealt with this huge thing so silently and separately.

Near my house, there's a nice trail that follows a stretch of Darby Creek. Like most of the green spaces in and around Lansdowne, it's pretty wild, minimally manicured. I used to think it was a scrappy and underfunded look, but recently I appreciate it more. I've been taking Ezzy on walks to a little waterfall along the trail. Today he started to fuss when we got there, so I took him out of the stroller, sat on a rocky ledge in the shade, and held him so that he could see the waterfall. I rocked him and pointed out water, rocks, plants and dirt. I know he won't remember the moment, but maybe one day he'll associate being in nature with the feeling of being held. The cynic in me wants him to have an experience of nature before it's annihilated by human greed and stupidity. But mostly I'm just trying to instill in him a love and enjoyment for the things I love and enjoy. We also water the garden together most mornings, him strapped to my chest and snoring while I hum little songs and tell him the names of the plants. I want him to value the natural world. I'm trying to raise him to be conscientious of the different species he shares the planet with.

Today was my first day back in the studio. I've done little things over the past three months (collage studies, surface prep, some small drawing commissions), but this was my first day closing the studio door for a block of hours to really paint. When I came downstairs to reheat my coffee, I stopped by the living room to say hi to Ezzy. He was perfectly content, playing on his mat under Eric's watch. It felt like I was greeting him for the first time as myself. I felt the transition, from "you are my life" to "you are part of my life," like switching gears on a bike. It felt new, but right, like things clicking into their proper place.

A therapist recently told me that leaving my career behind to raise my children wouldn't make me valorous or win me any points. It was freeing to hear. I simply need to work , and I’d prefer to not feel guilty for it. Having a child didn't change the core of who I am, didn't diminish or displace my identity as an artist. Ezzy's just layered into it now, an added ingredient flowing through my veins.

American Space at Tyler School of Art and Architecture

Thanks to everyone who came out to see the show! Here’s a few installation shots and my statement for the exhibition…

The large-scale paintings in this exhibition are all influenced by my experiences living and travelling through different regions of the United States. Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, I grew up mostly in suburban central Florida and have spent my adult years between the Midwest, North Carolina, and east coast cities like New York and Philadelphia. I’m interested in the cultural differences between these geographic regions, and how different members of my extended family, all seeing themselves as “American,” possess conflicting worldviews. Each painting is based on a small collage, made from photographs of the different places where I’ve lived or spent time.

On one level, the paintings offer a dystopic reflection of America. The compositions are fractured and disorienting, and are shot through with the artificial colors and slick affect that I associate with toxic consumerism and advertising. The paintings also speak to my anxieties around mainstream American culture’s domineering attitude toward nature. Yet plenty of passages are painted with tenderness; the work doesn't flat-out condemn America so much as it grapples with my love for a homeland that’s riddled with systemic problems.

On another level, the paintings move beyond reflection and reckoning with what is, and they begin to imagine what could be. They play with reconstructing a new world.

The exhibition also includes a selection of my recent drawings. I made these works intuitively throughout the pandemic, negotiating controlled marks with the unpredictable movements of ink and watercolor. Like the paintings, they play with inventing space and evoke a sense of possibility.