Pairings and grouping often find themselves in Julia Stewart’s work, as in some of her earlier paintings where she explored this theme specifically. There’s also a calm and serene tempo that runs through her paintings, in her use of colour but also in her application of paint, depicting soft hazes and crisp lines. Our friendship reaches back a number of years and so it is with love that I recall our discussions of Richard Diebenkorn and his seated figure paintings, these and Dolly Parton’s The Grass Is Blue album, ‘Maddi, I actually prefer it to her ballads,’ as she put it on. We sat together drawing to The Grass Is Blue once or twice. Diebenkorn is an applicable reference for this exhibition too, though most interesting when considering Julia’s own reflection in a mirror in Yellow, as she is both subject and observer, and not just one of these. She infiltrates the soft surface and is visually of the same importance as the chair, the vase and the doorway. Julia is in the work literally, and in spirit.

If you know Julia, her signature thoughtfulness and intent breathes through this series, and she brings us to see with affection the particular shifts in light around her home, through objects, around her living space, outside in the nearby environment of Melbourne’s inner west, and celebrates them for what they are. Introspections invites the viewer to think about light as it moves through the familiar: light that is always changing, renewing itself and its beauty. Like the sense of order in this work where little chaos seeps, Julia offers a respite from the aspects of reality which frazzle and tire us. She offers sites for contemplation and reflection through material and subject. Her observations are made familiar to us, too. The warmth and serenity that emulates in this work as colour and setting are extensions of Julia’s nature. I’m looking out my apartment window now at golden yellows, browns and greens of trees in a late afternoon Melbourne light… those are Julia tones.

Madeline Simm

May 2022