Julia Prusi

I have received a graphic artist education, but slowly moved on to painting. For me, painting is a search into the past and the future, observation, pondering, excitement and the joy of insight.

The thoughts from which my paintings stem are usually rooted in life, heredity and remembering, but during the working process my original ideas are allowed to develop freely. I have dealt with the same theme for almost 15 years, but my works have not been serial until very recently. I have also taken some of my older works and developed them further, and commented on their content from a fresh, maybe even a more mature, perspective.

The serial nature of my work has crept in quietly. In the years 2006–2008, I completed a group of portraits of the same size on a few different themes and combined them together in different hangings. The idea of a portrait puzzle was born. By taking out some pieces I can tell a story with my portraits. By mixing together different pieces from different puzzles I can create a kind of gene raffle. In the puzzle works I examine the relationship between the individual and the community, among others. In my latest portraits I also examine how a person wants to be portrayed: our roles and what we want to hide or camouflage in ourselves.

I want to create sustainable, timeless art. The present is represented e.g. in the interiors of my paintings and the clothing of my subjects, but my examples are in the realism of the late 1800s and early 1900s, naturalism, symbolism and impressionism. My goal is to create subtle, colourful, intuitive, and beautiful paintings that would evoke hope, joy, and compassion in the mind of the beholder. I consider ethical and ecological values as important starting points for my work.