Sedona-based artist Julie Bernstein Engelmann creates luminous abstract paintings in acrylic and Conte crayon. Her work explores themes of spiritual dreams and visions.
Educated on both coasts, Julie holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned her Bachelor of Arts (summa cum laude) from Barnard College in New York City, where she had the good fortune to study with first-generation Abstract Expressionist Milton Resnick.
Two decades of teaching abstract painting have honed Julie’s specialty in helping abstract artists bring their mid-process “beautiful mess” to fulfilled completion through three vital qualities of powerful abstract painting: meaning, naturalness, and spatial depth and flow. In addition, Julie shares valuable expertise in color mixing to enhance spatial depth.
Julie’s artwork has won many awards and was featured in a retrospective solo exhibition at the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art in Altoona, Pennsylvania. She has exhibited with contemporary galleries in Pennsylvania and Arizona, including the LaFond Gallery in Pittsburgh and the James Ratliff Gallery in Sedona.
See Julie’s CV and sign up for her free video training, The Key to Happily Completing Your Abstract Painting—even if you’ve lost hope, at julieengelmann.com
Follow Julie on instagram.com/juliebernsteinengelmann
Artist Statement
“There. Now I can see it!” So declared my mentor, first-generation Abstract Expressionist Milton Resnick, as he took my brush and dragged it loosely through my stiff painting. Suddenly the painting was a unified whole instead of parts. It was my first inkling that a painting has a life force of its own – and that, instead of inflicting myself on it, I could be receptive to it.
In the decades since, I have continued to nurture my relationship with the life force of the artwork, which I call the painting spirit.
To that end, I temper luminous acrylics with earthy Conte crayon – and confident brushstrokes with lyrical doodling – to create the illusion of depth and take the eye on a joyride through that space.
Each painting begins with a specific dream or spiritual experience that I want to explore. Often working with eyes closed, I move between visualization and layer-building, including gesture, washes and wipe-aways, and mark-making.
Once the painting reaches a critical mass of interestingness, I nudge its spatial depth and flow – always listening to the beautiful and mysterious painting spirit, so it sings with a clear vibration.
I watch for the moment when the whole painting opens up like a hologram and something thrilling comes to life that I’ve never seen before!
In this way, the completed painting becomes a harmonious, dynamic portal that invites the viewer to sense the spiritual vibration behind it.
