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Overview
Originally from Bulgaria, abstract artist Julia Maleeva received her BA in Fine Arts and MA in Architecture in 1996 in Sofia, Bulgaria. She completed Postgraduate specialisation in Architectural Heritage in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA. Her graphics and sketches can be seen in the US Library of Congress.
Julia has been living and working in UK for the last 17 years and now focuses completely on painting from her studio in Hampshire. She explores her subjects in an involved process of painting, drawing and applying wax to the surface.
Julia is showing in galleries around the UK and regularly has very successful shows in London and around UK, New York, Singapore and Hong Kong.
She is Associate Member of Penwith Society of Arts, Cornwall.
Won People’s Choice Award at Summer Open exhibition, Clifton, Bristol, 2021.
“My painting is a journey between three seas: the Mediterranean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Black Sea. The sources for my works are coming from my travels around Southern France, Italy, Cornwall and Bulgarian Black Sea coast. What makes these places special for me is the light, which is very distinctive and specific. These places are around water, and the colours differ because of the magic of light.
The attempt to bridge the colours of Provence, Cornwall and Black Sea coast, has been a journey between sea, wind, roads, emotions, ink sketches, canvas, paint, light and a viewer. My art is a deconstruction process of layers of paint waiting to be scraped and then layered back in a different perspective, just to show something more interesting. The way to go backwards discovers to me a unique story, like a detective game to find clues from the past.”
“I use cold wax as one of the main ingredients in my paintings, which allows me to create unique textures. Working only with palette knives I often add to the premixed oil/wax substance – Cornish sand, chopped sea weeds, old tea leaves or just scrapes of old paint from my palette. The whole scraping process involves my imagination to reuse everything again into the painting and be able to create a kind of sustainable art. Small bobbles are one of my signatures, made from scrapes and different mixtures. The wax also helps me to establish more translucency to the oil colours. I am ultimately on a journey to create a new fusion of dry point and oil painting, wrapped in cold wax.” – Julia Maleeva