Julie is a UK artist who uses creativity to navigate traumatic loss. In 2009, Julie’s husband ended his life through suicide. He was 43 years old and the father of their two young sons.
Using stitch, Julie creates work in which the process is obsessive. Stitching meticulously, she builds up complex layers of colours, altering tensions and changing threads throughout, sometimes for only a few stitches. In the final stage of making, all control is lost when the supporting canvas, a water-soluble fabric, is washed away, allowing the stitches to move around and find their own place in the drawing. With the errors of making now visible, Julie’s acceptance of the flaws is challenged, ensuring that a new way of thinking will happen. The parallel with living through loss is irrefutable.
Julie is a graduate of the Royal College of Art. Following an NHS career, she returned to study on retiring and knows that the two-year course was career affirming. Julie has won awards at the Hand and Lock Prize for Textile Art, been highly acclaimed by the Ruskin Prize, exhibited widely in the UK and abroad. Her work is held in the Diana Springall textile collection and owned by private buyers. She has had work published in journals and featured in a book on Contemporary Textiles. Julie has taught at the Hand and Lock Studio in London and has classes planned for West Dean College.
Julie has a profound commitment to talking about the unspeakable. Whilst the artist knows that the conversation she offers if difficult for some, its urgency for others compels her to say more as she pushes the boundaries of thread beyond what was once known.
