Julie Daniels
ARTIST STATEMENT
The Square Inch Project
This series of collages is the result of working with a local jeweler who created a line of pendants and rings using tiny circles of cast-off watercolor paintings from various artists and then pouring resin over them. After giving her some of my paintings from what I call my ‘turd’ pile, I got to thinking about what potential value these paintings might have. Though they were clearly worthless to me, she was willing to pay me for my work. We settled on charging by the square inch. Then I realized that there was value in these paintings, even though I thought of them as failures. So I started mining my own work for sections of color or texture that spoke to me. I simply play with placement until it feels cohesive. I am surprised and delighted every single time.
What I have learned from this is that all of it matters in life; the good, the bad, the successes and the failures. You can take a tiny piece of something you think of as no good and transform it by giving it value and reframing it. All our experiences weave together to make this “one wild and precious life” (Mary Oliver).
ARTIST STATEMENT
The Lost Summer Series
This series of oil paintings is a love letter to a place that has, and always will, have my heart: a small beach overlooking Buzzards Bay towards Cape Cod. The small cottage just up the road was what I always thought of as home, even though we were only there for the summers. It was all I ever looked forward to. A bit of family lore has it that when I was about four after coming home from church, I was nowhere to be found. My garments, however, left a trail down the dirt road to the beach, where they saw me and my bare bottom, just sitting and playing in the waves.
I have always loved sunset, a time of day when it is neither light nor dark; neither day nor night. Sunsets on the beach were especially beautiful and this series is an attempt to freeze time while capturing the serenity of the moment. Since the house is gone and the sunsets are now a memory, these paintings provide me a bit of solace for all the summers lost: past, present and future.