JULIE GROSS received an MFA from Hunter College in New York and a BFA from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. GROSS’ exhibitions are extensive, her bibliography crowded and her collections list impressive. She currently teaches at the Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

Drawing precedes painting in the work of JULIE GROSS. Since 1998 she has been using compasses on tracing paper to choreograph a network of circular forms, originally based on a sine wave or ‘s’ curve. These play with her interest in centrifugal/centripetal forces, in edges that set up tension as well as flow.

Symmetry and other sets at times reference echo, reflection, and establish pattern. As forms expand and contract, interconnect and vie for dominance, the drawing serves as an extension of her breath, setting up a kind of dance that pulsates across the surface. Circles remain or morph into other shapes until an overall web of ‘bubble slices’ exists. These optically scrolling ‘bubbles’ find correspondences, each being insistent without being overbearing.

Translated into paintings, these forms serve as vessels for color. Color decisions begin intuitively, and build, based on desires for either harmonic or dissonant relations. The luminous colors and untroubled surfaces brim with intensity but balance using what GROSS knows and what she "doesn’t" about color. She allows color to declare itself, yet keeps surprise in the equation. The overall effect reminds one about the psychology of color and how deeply personal it is. The internal velocity of each painting resolves itself differently. A single painting may evoke a sequence of experiences tuning hue and velocity into an optical frequency.

GROSS’ painted surface is precise and uninflected, allowing spatial interaction to be revealed simply and clearly, establishing a balance between surface tension and movement. The poised sensibility of the paint application reveals the accretion of many moments of attentiveness and care. GROSS is compelled by the discreet relationships that emerge from the interplay of color and form, in a tense field where subject and ground alternate. She wants the images to act as suspended, yet connected slices of light, breathing, tense and emergent.