Julia Medyńska
Bio: Julia was born in Socialist Poland. In 1985, her family managed to escape into West Berlin. After high school, she moved to New York to study acting, attending the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and the Neighborhood Playhouse. She performed at the Off-Broadway Manhattan Ensemble Theatre. In 2009, Julia returned to school to earn her BA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. She is a Phi Beta Kappa and a F.B. Doniger Scholarship recipient. Julia is heavily influenced by her acting background; her figurative paintings are composed narratives that explore the idea of the social mask employed in order to hide underlying psychological truths.
Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement: My painting explores the psychology of the individual. I compose environments where characters engage in violent acts while apathetic bystanders witness the macabre scene. I see myself as a film director composing narratives from unrelated source images to develop an uncanny dramatic scene. I search for my “actors” either in vintage black and white photography or film stills. Inspired by their body language, I invent a story. Its setting is either taken from a 19th century landscape painting or a film still. What attracts me to an image are lurid color temperatures and contrasting lighting scenarios. I aim for a beautiful yet ominous atmosphere, creating a world where characters inflict physical harm onto one another. I intentionally keep facial features and expressions minimal to resist describing an identity. Instead, the actors become archetypes, and their physical activity an allegory for a psychopathological world. Each painting is a horrid secret, where I can choose to lift the curtain.
L to R: I lost my head (72″ × 72″, Oil on canvas, 2017); Experiment #2 (20″ × 16″, Oil on linen, 2017)