About

My name is Julia. I am from Saint-Petersburg, Russia, and I currently live and work in Ontario, Canada. I have a background in printmaking, traditional drawing techniques and I have recently added watercolour and paper-cutting to my portfolio. When I first embarked on my path as an artist, I began by exploring the issues of displacement, the decay of memory, the places we occupy and our personal ties to them. I have since shifted to symbolic imagery, always keeping in mind personal histories and passions when I create my subject matter. That is where the hearts come from!

The first heart I ever drew was created during my my BFA degree at Western University. A rather morbid beginning of visiting the ‘morgue’ at our school so that the class could draw cadavers reminded me of visiting The Kunstkamera museum in St Petersburg (museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, established by Peter the Great in 1727). The museum featured a cabinet of curiosities which, typical of the times, included preserved ‘human curiosities and rarities’.

During the class visit at Western University, I was drawn to a preserved human heart - a bottled heart, as I called it. I sketched it and meditated on the idea of the heart. It is at the center of everything that we are, as human beings, symbolically and physically. I am currently working on a series, exploring the heart in various mediums and subject matters. In the future I hope to explore the entirely of the human body.

When I’m not creating art by hand, you can find me roaming the local nature spaces with my Fuji xt-4 in hand :) Thank you for joining me on my artistic journey!