Lincoln-based artist Julie A. Childers creates abstract acrylic paintings, focusing on the technique of using palette knives.

STATEMENT FROM THE ARTIST
Looking around at the walls in our first house, realizing how bare they were, I decided that I could do something about that. I picked up some acrylic paints, a simple brush, and a small canvas, and made my first painting in 2014. After creating that initial painting, I felt such joy. Art became so much more for me – an outlet for my emotions. I learned simply by trying different things – by moving the paint around with my bare hands, moving on to small palette knives, on to jumbo-sized palette knives. Sometimes I remove more paint that I left on the canvas. I moved from one medium to the next – charcoal to acrylic paint to watercolor to oil pastels. The oil pastels’ brightness and ability to blend or stand out as a single mark really worked crayons, and gave me a child-like feeling when I used them.

My latest focus is on the faces of a diverse range of people. I tend to focus on the eyes – my day job is at an optometrist’s office, so I look at eyes for most of the day. I build up firmness here, texture there, movement and piercing gazes. Previously painted canvases were used for most of the pieces, new backgrounds were made for a few portraits. Using the same size of canvas for each portrait highlights the similarity in us all, while the variety in the portraits shows the uniqueness of each of us. I hope that the viewer finds a connection with them. My hope is that we all find something interesting in each other and in each person we meet.

Contact the artist by email: julie.a.childers@gmail.com
Follow on Instagram @julieachildersartist