A painting made en plein air in Georgian Bay, Canada, in an area that I has been part of my family’s history. I painted this with my gloves on, wind barreling through me, while the scene reflected complete serenity.

Julie Himel

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Himel’s work is about human experience. And in that theme, she looks closer, to the elements of that experience, to worlds lived and imagined, the spiritual and the emotional, memory and promise. Her study of space is rooted in the understanding of landscape as both an encounter and an image. It’s in the balancing act of grounding and departure—always looking for the light through the tangle of life. It’s in decay, not as destruction, but as catalyst: a signpost for renewal, growth and reclamation. And it’s in honesty, about creating a portrait of landscape as it is: something apprehended and unknowable. Paint is the medium she uses to formalize the possibility of a place—a place alive, mutable and shared, a character in our collective unconscious.