Julie Mehretu is and Ethiopian/ American painter. Julie was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1970 and came to school in the United States. She claimed her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence in 1997. Her work mainly composes of large scale murals that are charged with her feelings on certain topics.

For example, her piece Politicized Landscapes is an abstract piece that has multiple layers to the process. She begins with blurred photos that give her a sense of how she wants to start. She prints those out large scale and stapled to the canvas. I love that she uses the photos that inspire her within the art but blow it up to where it is not blatant. After the photos are placed, she begins meticulously marking it as it feels. The work ends as a powerful and chaotic piece that comments on the hectic political climate. Using the blurred pictures as the color sets the tone as calm but fire-like.

Her pieces consist of various marks, lines, and shapes, creating high, explosive energy that is simply eye catching as the next line leads to another line or shape. looking at it as a whole provides a different experience than looking at it bit by bit.

I chose Julie because of her dynamic shapes and colors that make it stand out. Usually I prefer people within the pieces because I can connect an emotion to a face or to body language. However, in her artwork I see a visual representation of emotions using random shapes and lines. I believe it is because she says she takes how she feels about the topic and goes from there. She is finished when she feels she’s finished; there is something interesting about that. To me that communicates feelings are very in the moment just like her brush strokes.

Julie Mehretu is an interesting artist that I am glad I found. She has provided me with a new perspective on art. My taste mostly consisted of humans and expressing their emotions through facial or body expressions. I see now that a human form is not needed to express such emotions, it can be abstracted into chaos rather than put into a bodily expression.