Julie Gladstone is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist working in painting, textiles, performance, video and writing. Julie moves between disciplines with an ease and fluidity that is both enviable and admirable. She approaches the world and her work with a kind of relentless curiosity and does not shy away from risk-taking and experimentation in her studio practice.
In 2022 inspired by a series of knit and embroidered tablecloths and shawls that had been made by her grandmother and great-grandmother during the Sephardic Diaspora, Julie began working in textiles. She taught herself to embroider, knit and lace, going on to produce a truly remarkable collection of veils, garments and bags that were exhibited at her MFA thesis exhibition at OCADU. Julie laboured over these pieces while in the first years of becoming a mother herself and through them, both knit together and dismantled universal themes related to motherhood, memory and intergenerational trauma.
Julie is also a gifted healer working in modalities of Acupuncture and Reiki. Her interest in the energetic body shows up mostly in her oil paintings where vibrational expressive color applied in washes and dabs acts as a kind of internal mapping. I consider myself lucky to have Julie as a friend and peer and cannot wait to see what she produces next.
-Written by friend and artist Vanessa McKernan
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Which ’hood are you in?
I live in the Etobicoke Lakeshore area. I used to live in the Annex and moved here with my family a few years ago. I love being near Etobicoke Creek and close to the Lake but also just 15 minutes away from downtown.
What do you do?
I’m an artist, writer, musician, academic and mother. What’s important to me is always pushing the limits of my creativity and whatever ideas I’m currently exploring so the art I make is always evolving and can include many different forms. Primarily I’m a visual artist and have been making abstract paintings for the past 15 years. During my MFA I branched out into exploring textiles, video and music as part of my practice. I actually have a background in classical music and I grew up playing piano, guitar and writing songs as I come from a musical family. I still play and record music and have an EP called LifeLine which is available on streaming sites. and have a background in Traditional Chinese Medicine and worked as an acupuncturist for 10 years. I’m interested in themes related to consciousness, healing, repair work, intergenerational trauma, metaphysics, the quantum field and motherhood. I’m also the mother to a five-year-old daughter. Taking care of her and spending time together is a major part of my life and inevitably themes related to mothering, the domestic sphere and the experience of being a mother artist tie in strongly to my research, writing and explorations with textiles.
What are you currently working on?
I’m currently one of the artists in residence at the Gladstone House! I’m working on a new series of experimental works where I’m exploring bridging traditional fine art materials with textiles, needlework and found objects. For example, I’m embroidering on paper with ink and watercolours, and attaching random plastic objects and toys, pipe cleaners, ribbons, repurposed clothing, scrap metal etc. into the composition to explore a relationship of mark-making between a painted gesture and a found object.
I’m also currently working on a new series of oil paintings for an upcoming exhibition at Wall Space Gallery in Ottawa with the artist Olivia Mae Sinclair. The new work I’m making is being supported by a research-creation grant from the Toronto Arts Council.
Where can we find your work?
Website | Instagram | Life Line EP | YouTube
