printwork

Julie Bailey began her artistic career as a jeweller, working with precious metals. After gaining a first class honours degree in Fine Art Printmaking and a Post Graduate Diploma in Contemporary Fine Art Practice she now regularly exhibits in Galleries across the UK and abroad and has provided  artwork for Indigo Arts in Liverpool for offices, hotels and other public spaces.

Her printwork combines innovation with traditional printmaking methods to produce a fragile synthesis between the classical and the contemporary. Strongly influenced by the world around her, Julie is able to combine clarity of focus with dream-like imagery. Inspired by the natural world and the often overlooked; horticultural and everyday subjects are portrayed with sensitive attention to detail. The stylised influence of East Asia is also a strong presence.

Julie lived in Singapore as a child, and this can be seen at a conceptual level in her use of imagery as well as ideologically; multi-layered perspectives exist in many of her pictures. A realm of infinite possibilities is created, where interior and exterior worlds collide or merge. She combines and layers a range of print techniques from collagraph to monoprint, dry point and relief. Her unique talent produces pieces with wide-ranging appeal.

REVIEW: New Prints at Pyramid Gallery, York, Autumn 2006

“The inspiration behind Julie's work is often something capricious. Not just any flower, but the shadow cast by an exotic plant in a far flung location. The delight and romance of the fleeting image is captured in her sketchbook and later translated onto a collagraph or etching plate. Then she experiments with different layers and combinations of printing. Some of the recent images are printed over carefully selected and cut out designs from exclusive wallpapers, which are incorporated into the final piece using the technique of chine colle. All this provides appeal and intrigue for the viewer. It is sometimes difficult to determine which elements of each unique print are drawn and etched lines, which are chine colle and which areas of colour are applied on the plate and which are part of the fragments of wallpaper. But such matters are not really important. What is important is the overall effect. The images are almost abstract and almost unreal. They are stylish and tasteful with sumptuous line and colour and pleasing textures. The beauty is in the line, the colour and the style; all of which combine to make very desirable works of art.”

Terry Brett, Pyramid Gallery