Julie Poulin Art

I am an impressionistic oil and pastel landscape artist who paints en plein air and in my studio from reference photos of places I have been and sometimes from my imagination. Painting impressionistically means that I paint what I feel using colour and mark-making after having a few years of training helping me deliver my message. I simply enjoy the freedom of not painting exactly what is in front of me.

I have loved looking at the colours of nature since I was very young. I was mesmerized by the colour vibrations of trees against a bright blue sky, the different colours of clouds, the atmosphere produced on a hot and humid summer day from the steam coming off a street after it rained.

My goal is to share with you what I feel through pastel and through oil paint when I look at the chaotic organization of Nature. My challenge is to use the right combination of colours to do this: the push, pull and vibration of competing colours, the harmony of others and the balance between warm and cool colours. I paint ‘the feeling’ of the scene to spark a memory, a desire or a sense of peace.

I use pastels because the vibrancy of pastel colours cannot be duplicated by any other medium and they allow me to draw and paint at the same time. They are immediate as there is no need to mix colour. I love how they feel in my fingers and the scraping sound they make on the paper. One pastel stick allows me to make so many different marks: it’s like having different paint brushes in one stick. I also paint using oils because I am trained in oils first and foremost, and I love the feel of the oil paint under my brush as well as the satisfaction of mixing just the right colour.

In either medium, my process begins by applying an underpainting. When I paint in pastels, I use a watercolour, acrylic, or even a pastel underpainting of a colour that will vibrate through the finished pastel. Often this is a bright pink, an orange or even a deep reddish-brown.

I paint for fun, to relieve stress and simply because I love it.

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www.juliepoulinart.com

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