Julia McIntyre Printmaking

Artist Interview

A recording of the interview will be posted here in the coming weeks.

Artist Statement

Experiencing loss from a young age, I cling to memories, unreliable and distorted as they may be, as though my life depends on it. Those I have lost are contained in dreamlike spaces, preserved whether they exist in the present or not. I revisit the spaces I have occupied for comfort, to grieve, to love. A significant portion of the memories from my childhood are contained within one home, which I have spent the past year preparing never to enter again. Though I have not inhabited the house for the better part of a decade, reflecting upon the pervasiveness of its presence in my memory has shaped both visual and technical aspects of my work. The manipulation, abstraction, and layering of imagery and materials is a nod to the way memory warps and deteriorates space over time.

The printmaking medium supports my conceptual concerns—the reproducible multiple lends itself to the fluid nature of memory, time, and loss. I document my own experience with the acceptance of the tragedy of memory through domestic imagery, as the spaces I have inhabited provide the framework of my selfhood. Through layering of marks, colors, and textures, the once familiar becomes disorienting. My work encompasses various types of printmaking and surfaces, including handmade kozo paper and relief-printed panes of glass to reference my childhood home and more abstractly, the inevitable distortion of the past.

“I document my own experience with the acceptance of the tragedy of memory through domestic imagery, as the spaces I have inhabited provide the framework of my selfhood.”