A Conversation with June Featured Artist Julie Cowan
Much of your work in this exhibit is inspired by nature, a departure from much of your past work. What inspired this change regarding your subject matter?
I noticed that I had a collection of photos that were meaningful to me in other ways than the portraits and architecture subject matter. These were photos of leaves, trees, butterflies, and landscapes - natural subject matter with different shapes, colors, and compositions. Especially in recent months being forced under lockdown, when I stopped rushing and doing, I started to look more closely and take time with these new ideas.
Did you recently take these images, or have they been in your inventory for a while?
The images were taken in the fall and winter printed before the COVID crisis. I have not had access to my press and so I have spent the past couple of months coloring these prints and developing the finished works with pastel and/or colored pencil.
How does the process of creating lithographs with nature subjects differ from lithographs with portraits and architecture?
The physical process is the same. The image is captured in photography, manipulated digitally, printed on a printing press and hand-colored. Generally, I would not say that there is a difference due to subject matter. I might say that the coloring of the natural imagery is more resplendent that I typically use, perhaps as I am living a more interior life.
What role does color play in these works?
See above. I am taking many black and white images and adding color more assertively than I have in a while. I don't have access to a press right now, so I am pushing the prints to greater limits through color. I have a weakness for colored pencils, and I use a set of pastels that I have had since my teenage years, and I often combine the two dry media. I have been interested in "dripping" these media in the imagery lately.
How do you decide what to color and what to not?
It depends. I may see something else that shows me a colorway that is interesting, like a postcard from a show on Bauhaus textiles, or a photo that captures a landscape at a certain time of day.
Sometimes I have an inkling to work in a certain color family and I find various hues in a family and start there by selecting some pencils and pastels. Additional colors are often added once I lay some color down and make sense in relation to the earlier colors.