American artist Julia Goldman synthesises abstraction and figuration in her portraits of female figures – many of them based on herself. Painted in 2009, the present two works are early jewel-like canvases from her series Girls. Blending thick impasto with thin layers of colour, Goldman relishes the properties of her medium, contrasting her expressive handling of pigment with her flat, planar forms. ‘I want to make paintings that are thorough’, she says, ‘– brought to a finish (and hopefully a finish that resonates with experience, that reveals the contradictory and unsettling nature and complexity of the commonplace). I think any subject is potentially unsettling, but I choose familiar ones (my face, my clothes, the stuff in my studio) because I can evaluate them easily … I can transform them, dissect them, simplify them, and destroy them with confidence. They provide criteria for proceeding with a painting, and [those] criteria [are] based on years of observation and consideration. This is the best way I know.’
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