"Julia Colmenares (UK, USA), American by birth, is half Latin American, the other half, European/California Native American. Her painting and print practice is informed by landscape, the imagination, and the emotive act of gestural mark-making � physical energy transferred from the body to the metal plate or canvas. Colmenares, explores the connection between landscape and the sensory experience through the process of mono-printing. Using gestural marks, she wipes away, scrawls and jabs, revealing an image from an inked steel plate. The resulting imagery is drawn from nature, unconscious or imagined sources, as well as 1950s flower identification books. The technique�s time limitation serves as a conduit to both print and painting practice, encouraging spontaneity and honesty in the mark making process. Some works draw from observation, memories and an awareness or personal questioning of cultural shapeshifting and transnational perceptions of landscape. Being an American living abroad has brought her closer to her own roots and histories. The pandemic emphasized �livingness� and propelled many to seek nature. Print works, Wild Lands Reverie and Livingness, Early Light Encounter witness this space: alive, introspective and magical, finding beauty in the traditional to the everyday urban landscape of London.

Julia Colmenares is a painter and printmaker. Trained in San Francisco, the artist worked as an illustrator after completing a BA at the Academy of Art College (University), San Francisco. She studied painting, earning a Diploma in France, then completed an MA in Fine Art in London at Byam Shaw School of Art. She teaches drawing and painting privately and at Morley College. She has worked as a tutor/lecturer for both Central Saint Martins� short courses and London Metropolitan University. She maintains a studio in East London and has exhibited in the UK, France, Poland and the United States.
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