Hope Is Optimism With A Broken Heart by Julia Flanagan

Acrylic on board with painted assemblage

Julia Flanagan works across painting, sculpture, textiles and drawing. Born in Newcastle, she moved to Sydney to study Painting and completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School in 2004 and her Painting Honours in 2005.

Flanagan’s unstructured and playful work always begins with drawing and the random placement of looping lines of colours, shapes and forms on paper. Joyous geometry is loosely layered with bright colours, shapes and patterns creating improvised and unconventional works which glow and vibrate.

Julia has a love and fascination for patterns and colour, stemming from a background in textiles making, leatherwork and design. This passion is evident in the playfully pieced together shapes within her work, referencing the scraps of material found in her studio and draw inspiration from the decorative arts, as well as shapes and patterns observed in her domestic and suburban environments. For Flanagan, the repetitiveness of mark making and pattern painting are a calming, hypnotic and therapeutic process allowing time for contemplation on the connectedness of humans, hope and finding what makes us happy.

Flanagan has been a finalist in a number of art prizes including , the Muswellbrook Art Prize and Fishers Ghost Art Prize. She was the winner of the Georges River Sculpture Prize in 2019. In 2020 Flanagan collaborated with iconic Melbourne fashion label GORMAN on a range of clothing and textiles adorned with her artwork.