Julia Neils

My intensely colored and alluring pieces investigate the ways that a painting can serve as a visual trap, both for the viewer and the creatures that live inside of the frame. In each work unique humanoid figures embody the characteristics of different plants or animals, performing their roles in environments manipulated by human technologies. The creatures take on a marionette quality, seemingly helpless and subdued fools. They stir a sense of pity, while also creating a foreboding sense of dread as they act out their roles within an environment structured to both sustain them and keep them captive. The overwhelming and invasive power of these imposed systems is demonstrated through the layered entanglement of nature, limbs, and technology. 

Echoing the malleable and manipulative disposition of a puppet, elements in my work reference the visual language of the stage. Disrupting the illusion of space through carefully positioned flat planes of color and meticulously placed drop shadows that flatten the figures, further enclosing them within the confines of the frame. These paintings also engage with the history of romantic landscape painting, in that they are beautiful, seductively painted objects, but take on strange orientations, creating a sense of compositional vertigo. This disorienting beauty is further undercut by disembodied figures that pinch and prowl across the surface, always just out of sight.