Julie Speed
Julie Speed is an Austin Texas artist who does paintings and collages.
She calls her style "para-realism." Her paintings have an "old master"
look, but with modern themes and her own symbolism. I saw some of her
collages at the Pillsbury & Peters Fine Art Gallery in Dallas and they
gave me a booklet from their 2002 showing of her work, Alters of My Ancestors
and Other Recent Work. Speed has both talent and ideas.
Her ideas are influenced by Catholicism; or rather they are a
counter-reaction to Catholicism. Her paintings project a stoic determination
in the face of fear, violence and deprivation. There is a Midwestern plainness
to the female characters. Their clothing is fascinating: simple, yet highly
detailed and textured with earthy colors. Often they are wearing hats that
resemble nurse's hats. The buttons are in odd places. The overall effect is
very decentering, even spooky.
The symbols used include bones and bone fragments,
fire, a blue mask on a boy, and a third eye on some of the female and animal
characters.
Hall Groat II writes: "Perhaps the third eye points a symbolic
finger to the layers of thoughts and feeling that move about, unbidden,
beneath the behavior we display in our conscious lives." For me such intrusions
of surrealism are a distraction. I find the blue mask a much more powerful
device to focus our attention on what lies beneath. Her use of fire could stand
improvement. Fire is an important symbol, but Speed's flames are too
red and rather cartoonish.
She has been influenced by the Belgium surrealist Rene Magritte (1898-1967).
One of her catalog covers has the picture of her painting
Portrait of Mr. Magritte, in which the head replaced by a pair, recalling
Magritte's
The Son of Man.
Speed has also been compared to Salvador Dali. But I like her more subdued
"para-realism" better.
Hieronymus (Jeroen) Bosch (c. 1453-1516)
also appears to have influenced Speed's work.
Paintings
- Annunciation (The Second Coming), 2001, oil on board, 30" x 36".
What would happen if Mary were too pure to be impregnated even by God?
Could this be the question Speed is asking in this painting? There is a
young woman, maybe 30ish, in the center. She is standing with her right
shoulder to the viewer, but her head is turned toward the viewer, her brown
eyes staring out. Her face is plain but attractive, her brown hair is in a bun.
She is wearing a finely embroidered gray jacket. She is holding a slightly
withered lily and has a reddish orange frog on her head. The background is
an earthy yellowish green filled with white specks that can only be sperm.
The sperm swirl around a vortices, searching? The frog tries to catch one
with its long tongue. But the women stares out at us. The world is oozing
with life-force all around her, but her flower wilts. Has the second coming
been so long delayed because we are not receptive? Does Virtue need assistance
from the Devil Frog? Can life be life if we ignore mischief?
This is my favorite Speed painting. It is in a private collection so I'll
probably never get to see it.
- Damage, 2003, oil on linen, 24 x 24 inches.
This is Speed's response to the attacks of 9/11 2002. A women, her head
wrapped is bandages (that look rather more like ribbons), stares over her
left shoulder toward us, mouth slightly open. Out the window of her dark
room we see flaming bodies falling from the sky. She has a puzzled look.
(Speed is excellent at portraying the most subtle emotions.) She's wearing
what might be a hospital gown, although it is yellow. She is likely a patient
in a mental facility, the only safe place to be.
- Blue Boy, 1998, oil on archival and Masonite, 22 x 30 inches:
There are three figures against a dark brown or black background.
Two are adult women, one is a boy wearing a blue mask. Each is looking in
a different direction. The boy, stands left shoulder to us to the left of
the two women and stares to left. The women in the center looks up and to the
right, her month open with perhaps a snarl. The other woman has her arms
crossed and her head turned toward us; we are drawn to meet her gaze.
Her face is
slightly misshapen: the eyes are at different heights and the slope of her
forehead is too steep. Her hair is flowing but I do not feel that there is
any breeze. She is spooky. Their clothing is odd. The boy is wearing a button
down white shirt. The center woman a blue-green dress three with buttons
over her left breast. The haunting woman staring out at us is wearing a pale
yellow dress with a detailed geometric design. (Has Speed even designed
clothing?) All all wearing white nurse-like caps that would be comic but
are eerie. And of course the boy is wearing a blue mask. The whole is as
fascinating as the parts. I am pulled from figure to figure and then to the
whole and then back to the characters. One wants badly to read a story into
this painting, yet somehow knows that there isn't one there.
- Watchdog, 2001, oil on canvas, 12 x 15 inches.
In this painting there is a man facing us. He takes up most of the painting.
He is wearing a livery costume, bright red with gray trim, complete with a
cap and gold epaulets. The background is a black sky filled with fireworks.
Most are white, but some match the gold in the man's shoulder pads. The
fireworks do not seem to come from the ground but rather emerge from space
itself, a life-force, spontaneous generation, vacuum polarization.
The cap bears an insignia that reads, "Protection Police," but also says,
when held up to a mirror: "GOD."
The expression of the man is twofold. If you cover up his right side (our left)
the expression is anger: "get away!" But if you cover the other side, the
expression clearly becomes fear. Indeed, his right shoulder is lower than his
left, as though he were running away from the fireworks in fear of his life.
And then of course his outfit gives the whole scene a comic affect.
Is he a guardian keeping us away from the mystery of creation,
perhaps for our own safety,
or is he a frightened little man running away from the end of the universe?