Julea Boswell
"As a dancer turned visual artist, I see the world around me as a mood-boosting dance that I put into paint."
MessageIn addition to her visual art, Julea Boswell's multifaceted career includes early days as a dance artist and educator followed by over 20 years in marketing and management roles including in Cultural Development with the City of Ottawa and as General Manager with Propeller Dance Company.
Studying art, dance, and performing in professional theatre productions as a child set the stage for Julea to draw from a variety of elements to expand and evolve a body of work that includes textiles, drawings, paintings, and collaborations with performing and multimedia artists. Her colourful abstracts reveal interflowing themes of nature, movement and music expressed in a fresh and contemporary style.
Boswell's work has been featured in solo and group shows as well as onstage with Propeller Dance and outdoors in a site-specific event with Farmgate Theatre. Her art is held in collections in Canada, the US, Europe, Asia and Mexico. She holds a Diploma in Theatre (Dance), an MBA and earned her BFA in Visual Art with distinction at age 64.
Boswell lives and works in Ottawa and PEI, and has also lived in Toronto, Edmonton and Berlin.
Statement
My art is sparked by movement and beauty. As a dancer turned visual artist I see the world around me as a mood-boosting dance that I put into paint. I am deeply influenced by the amazing natural beauty that surrounds me — from growing up on Prince Edward Island to living most of my adult life near the Ottawa River — and by my involvement in visual art, dance, music and theatre from a young age. From these experiences, my motivation as an artist has been steadily fuelled by the power of artistic expression to spread joy and bring people together. I express the energy and emotions inspired by interflowing themes of nature, movement, dance, and music in colourful paintings that range from stylized imaginative interpretations of nature to purely abstract lyrical works. I also work on projects with other artists whose creativity inspires me, including dancers with and without physical disabilities and neurodiversity, and musicians and composers.
I approach each piece as a kinetic and tactile process of discovery, moving to music while creating and moving the unstretched canvas freely from the wall to the floor. I’m a fan of working on raw canvas and create surface texture using palette knives, squirt bottles and different kinds of rags (linen, cotton, paper) to apply, blend and erase colour. I’m not afraid of colour! I love to use fluorescent and metallic pigments to punctuate and add energy to my work.
"Wow! Such colour and freedom. I love your expression of movement." - solo show visitor
”The paint dances across the canvas.” - exhibitor's comment
"I’ve seen ten thousand waves on canvas in my lifetime and none are as evocative as this. Exquisite." - Facebook comment
“A breath of fresh air! Breezy. It has such a lightness and positivity that make it pretty irresistible." - Instagram follower
"Your joyful work is exactly what the world needs!" - Artwork Archive blog author
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