Places of Enchantment
The work of Julian Bond, whether it be acrylic, charcoal or oil pastel, is characterised by its ability to seduce. This is achieved firstly through the creator’s dialogue with his subject and the manner in which he expresses his gathered images, and secondly through the viewer’s subsequent dialogue with the work.
To the viewer Julian’s work may be described as ‘seductive’ because of its ethereal quality: there is just enough for the viewer to identify a wooded copse, a Baroque interior, an expansive boundary-less garden. There are clues to guide, which also intrigue – the glimpse of a fountain, a building, a profile of statuary, incremental blocks of varied greens that delight the eye and lead to a hinted-at stream, spears of foxgloves or hollyhocks. But the work is not confined to the domestic. Other paintings suggest wilder and more exotic locations, expressed through more intense relationships of colour and texture.
In the viewing process time is suspended as the eye tries to make sense of the juxtaposition of shapes and colour – and spaces. There is a sense of the mystical in the quietness depicted and the quietness needed to understand the drama that is being unfolded. Through Julian’s practice of using and layering different qualities of paint and brushwork; his ability to use broken colour, flat colour and change the weighting of colour, the subject emerges. It is always enchanting and the subject is enchantment.