Julie Mauskop

Julie Mauskop builds a world oscillating between reality and a dream. While creating, she imagines how a dancer expresses themselves through forms of the body and bodily movements. This comes from a love of the way people can express themselves non-verbally. Sometimes these figures are hiding away in sleep and at other times they come out of their nest in order to flirt, dance, and wander about this world with its uncanny realities. The stories in her paintings portray spaces where creatures are in an uncharted territory, discovering one another while in liminal states. They are between asleep and awake, between hiding and exposing, between movement and stillness. Mauskop paints with bright and nuanced combinations of color which enhance subtle gestures. These works are an invitation into intimate scenes where pillows playfully caress and support flowing limbs as abstracted bodies explore a sensual dialogue. She creates environments where otherworldly figures relate to one another intimately and whose sexuality is mimicked with the placement of sensual and exotic fruits. The artist enjoys the surreal feeling of waking up or falling asleep because of how the subconscious plays with the mind and re-arranges experiences from the day. The title Sweet Slumberings comes from this idea of finding the sweet spot in the unconscious while also referencing the figures’ temptation to the fruit and to one another.