Julian Simon

Julian Simon paints in oil with a restricted palette of ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, cadmium yellow, ebony black and titanium white, often using a single brush, which gives the paintings a muted, smoky unity, like a haze laid over each scene. The pictures draw on his own memories and have the framing of snapshots: stars in a night sky, dogs running through a dusty park, birds circling above sunlit water. Into these he sets clay-like figures and objects that look deliberately added, sometimes casting a faint shadow as if stuck onto the surface, like a wish for what the moment could have been. Simon builds his images from meeting opposites and uses them to face fear and vulnerability directly. In one painting a sun dips its legs into open water, the thing he is most afraid of.