Julie Himel’s vivid paintings push the genre of landscape into striking, dreamlike representations of place, often with an element of nature’s unruliness, decay, or sublime disorder. Exploring ideas of space and encounter in which people are not directly present, her paintings present opportunities to step into portraits of natural spaces, often with highly unorthodox or ‘unnatural’ colors. Himel uses bold, active strokes with both brush and palette knife, with generous application of brightly saturated layers of oil and acrylic paint to create richly textural surfaces.
Julie Himel received a Diploma of Fine Art from Langara College, Vancouver, BC; a BFA Honours Degree from York University, Toronto, ON; and a Graduate Diploma from the Toronto School of Art, Toronto, ON. She is represented by Foster/White Gallery in Seattle, Washington, Stremmel Gallery in Reno, Nevada, and Tyger Tyger Gallery in Asheville North Carolina. Her work is currently featured in an exhibition with Visionary Projects NYC, New York. Himel’s paintings are included in private and public collections across the world, such as The University of Calgary, Calgary, AB; Westfield State University, Westfield, MA; the Armenian Community Centre Art Collection, Toronto, ON and several corporate collections.
