Julie Atkinson (b. 1977) is a visual artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Julie began painting while working as a lawyer. Since her formal education had not included art, she learned techniques and art history through books from the public library, online videos, and, eventually, community center classes. Soon, what had begun as a means of breaking up the routine of her legal career became a passion and Julie changed paths.
In 2020, Julie’s work began to focus on depictions of Black women in various levels of abstraction. The chaotic political climate drove her to read work by Black authors such as Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Lucille Clifton, and others who had, unfortunately, been left out of her earlier education. She was inspired to take her figurative art practice in the direction of exploring the nuances of Black female identity. Creating this work became an opportunity for her to exhale, heal, and imagine.
Julie’s work has been exhibited in California at SLATE Contemporary in Oakland, San Francisco Women Artists Gallery in San Francisco, Artworks Downtown in San Rafael, and at other galleries and public spaces in the Bay Area. Her work has also been in exhibitions around the country, including in Illinois, Wyoming, and New Jersey. In 2022, her piece, Yellow, was selected for the Black Creativity Juried Art Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois. Julie is currently an active member of the ACCI Gallery in Berkeley, California.
Julie lives with her husband and two children.
Statement
My artistic practice explores Black female identity through abstracted and figurative paintings. Wanting to feel accepted as one’s authentic self is a universal feeling that I have understood specifically as a Black woman who has been in predominantly white spaces. My art has emerged from this feeling and taken the form of wanting to create a visual language around a woman that centers her own peace and well-being: how would she exist in a space of her own creation?
Using a soft color palette and textural marks, my work invites quiet contemplation that meanders between peaceful and melancholic. Instead of capturing the everyday life of a Black woman, I am interested in creating imagined spaces that reflect inner feelings. In my creation process, I am thinking less about this moment in time and more about the common threads across generations. What do I think my ancestors dreamed and what would I like to leave for my children?
My paintings often emphasize textured hair, embracing it as a source of pride, and affirming the beauty of its volume and shape. I play with levels of abstraction in both the body and the background to create dream-like images, using water-mixable oil paints in both their creamy and diluted states. The selective use of a palette knife to add thick strokes of paint throughout invites the viewer to draw closer to the texture and contributes to the intimacy of the moment. In presenting the women either in a white dress or without clothes, and in obscuring portions of her face or body, my intention is to remove the markers of a particular social class in a particular moment in time and, instead, emphasize her reconnection with herself.