New Paintings
March 2007
Dave At Lunch, 2007, oil, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches
Julia Shirar is a painter. Her portraits are a celebration of, and a testament to, a human interaction that is increasingly rare with the advent of the information age. She invites friends and mostly strangers to her studio or goes to their homes to paint. A departure from her previous work, she is looking outside her documentation of friendships, in an effort to engage people she would never otherwise know. She is the painter pursuing the subject, not a paid sitter, in what amounts to a cold call. This creates an incredible tension. Much of her process is a direct reaction to her professional background in Hollywood film and its pat simulation of reality. Big film created a need in Julia to establish a regular visual relationship with people rather than their simulacra. She paints live sitters whose unconscious movements complicate the idea of depiction and doesn't use photographs for reference. The time that elapses and the stories that are told are integral to the form. They create the pathos. Except when the painting environment is restricted, the work is life-sized, as a means of creating a space where the viewer can physically engage the image as they would in life. The group of paintings showing at Rowan Morrison is a portion of her ongoing series about her adopted home-town. Together, they bear witness to a time, and a bit of the setting...Oakland.
Julia Shirar was born in Philadelphia, PA. The daughter of an opera singer and a traveling salesman, she lived many places, but now calls Oakland home. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Painting from Tyler School of Art, Temple University and a Master's Degree in both Painting and Film/Video from California College of Arts and Crafts. Her painting education was fortified by the brushwork and technique she learned during her ten years as a restorative faux painter/trompe l'oeil artist in the historic homes of Delaware and Pennsylvania. She has always worked between different disciplines but considers herself to be a painter. She has made five video shorts and has a documentary in progress. Julia is a guitar player, writer and singer with three c.d.'s to her credit and another one due to be released in April. She also works as a sound editor and assistant designer for feature films. Her credits include Adaptation by Spike Jonze and Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola. She has shown nationally and appeared in print, film and on the radio internationally. She recently returned to Oakland from New York to focus on her portraits.
artist's website: www.juliashirar.com