Julie Mallis 

Artist Statement: 

I work in the mediums of painting, video and installation. The images I create are vivid and possess a fluid dynamism. My work undermines traditional boundaries between media by combining oil, acrylic and watercolor paintings through digital manipulation. When showcasing the work, I combine moving and still images into projections on surfaces that cater to an illusion of spatiality. These time-based visual installations work in tandem with an audio counterpart either built into the video or being performed live.

Bio:

Julie Mallis has exhibited her paintings, installations and video art nationally in the Bay Area, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New York City. She creates work at Pittsburgh's Radiant Hall Studios and is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University where she received her degree in Electronic Time Based Media and Anthropology. As one part of the creative duo Magic Organs, she regularly hosts and curates art shows and performances. Professionally, she teaches visual art and digital media and directs a cycling program for under-resourced youth.

About These Works:

Often depicting lush and alien landscapes using new media, I combine digital and traditional hand-painting methods. The compositions rely on mountains, lakes, vegetation and what happens beyond the horizon of what you can see or understand. Just as mountains hold a presence of the missing earth or glaciers that shaped it, the paintings capture the memories of what happens after something decays or before it comes to be. The paintings exist in a non-linear time that present these fragmented moments into a collaged digital landscape.

The paintings go through a complex process before it can arrive at its finished output. I start off with an image of a place I have dreamt of, visited or imagined. I begin a painting, often with oils on canvas or with watercolors and ink on paper. I scan the painting into a high quality .jpg and open it in Photoshop. From there I layer parts of the painting and alter its opacity to create ethereal and 3D spaces. I often increase the vibrancy but lower the saturation and contrast to create a completely alien place that exists only in the ether of the mind. I mask out certain objects and duplicate them into something entirely different. For example, I digitally cut out an eyeball from "Eyed Know" and transformed it into a long line of clouds looking over a desolate sky in "Mount Eyed". Much of the digital work featured below was recently displayed in a solo exhibition in Oakland, California entitled: Julie Mallis: New Media Paintings