Julia Schwartz is a visual artist working in painting, installation, and paper. Deeply influenced by years of psychoanalytic study and practice, her paintings straddle figuration and abstraction. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including shows in LA, New York, London, and Amsterdam. Recent shows include the opening door at Et al Gallery in San Francisco, and group shows at Personal Space, PULP, Holyoke, MA and Marin MOCA. Curatorial projects include "States of Being” at the Torrance Art Museum and "Black Mirror" at Charlie James Gallery. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including New American Paintings, Two Coats of Paint, Post Road, Huffpost, and New York Times. Schwartz has been a member of the artist-run project The Binder of Women. After 20 years in Santa Monica, she now lives and works in El Cerrito, California.

I began painting after practicing psychoanalysis for 10 years and I am largely self-taught. Like the analytic process, art is dialogic: it is an experience in the making and the receiving, as vital as any other language. Color, indexical mark making, and symbols (such as archways, crosses, and waves) materialize in my paintings as means to convey and process personal and global events such as my daughter’s sudden passing, my husband’s life-threatening illness, political upheaval. Since my move from Los Angeles to the Bay area in 2021, mid-pandemic, my paintings have incorporated my untamed field and now a growing orchard and garden.

Exhibitions:

Spring Awakening