Julie Abowitt

Most of my subjects are inspired by my environment. When I moved to Port Townsend, in the Pacific Northwest, I developed an attraction to boats and their rigging. The strong, geometric lines fit beautifully with my love of bold linocuts. Since moving to the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon, the stunning sweep of the river, waterfalls, dormant volcanoes, and lush forests entice me to use flowing, undulating curves.

For the past few years I have concentrated on printmaking, adding other mediums (inks, watercolors, oils, acrylics, colored pencils, etc.) for color and variation. I love the graphic quality of black and white prints and I reach a point where I must work with color. Recently, I have been doing more drawing painting.

My prints are created using both traditional methods (copper plate etchings, cutting into linoleum and wood blocks, printing with an etching press and by hand), and alternative materials (plastic sheets and matboard as plates, dried organic materials and found objects as forms). Each print is pulled by hand by me (called an artist-pulled print) and then matted or framed with the acid-free and archival materials. 

Since my student days at Music and Art High School, and following that, as a Fine Art major at Queens College of the City University of New York, there has been an overlay of the abstract in how I view the world. At a show where I was exhibiting some of my original digital prints, a woman approached me and said, “I don’t usually like realistic art, but these are so abstract!” 

Much of my art is an interpretation of what's bountiful in our world. I want those images to reflect a side of life that is as powerful in its lightness as is art that portrays the darkness; one does not have less value than the other. There are times when pain needs to be expressed through art and I hope I can do it justice too.