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ABOUT

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GRAPHIC DESIGN

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PAINTING

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PRINT MEDIA & PHOTOGRAPHY

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SCULPTURE

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VISUAL NARRATIVE

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@bu_visualarts

@bu_graphicdesign

@bostonpainting

@pmp.bu
@bostonsculpture
@buvisualnarrative

www.juliamcgehean.com

@julia.mcgehean

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Julia McGehean

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Rendered to scale with crisp lines defining the edges of regulated color, my paintings depict tennis courts and book pages with intersecting qualities of geometric abstraction, action painting, and trompe l’oeil. Through an overlapping presence of sequential tracking in sports and literacy, my process is informed by a parts-to-whole paradox of labored learning. Each painting is a visual record of the cumulative efforts that are inherently erased at the threshold of success. I interrupt these compartmentalized shapes in relation to movement and (mis)translation by imprinting sneaker soles and game-related gear into wet grounds. This responsive approach intuitively records the pressures of manufactured mark-making to lift and deposit oil paint across the impacted surface. Despite their inert properties, these paintings are active opponents in the studio; relating the endurance of failure and grief to running with a stone in your shoe. 

Through an amalgamation of published imagery and everyday office supplies, I engage with found objects as a tangible study of the writing process. My collection serves as a modular dictionary in which distinct definitions are exchanged for familiar forms. As an artist, I am also an editor. I add, subtract, and rearrange visual components until they formally and pragmatically converge as one. Whether assembled laterally on shelves or vertically in pegboard, these working documents consider the neurological interplay between objects and words and objects as words. This offbeat internal dialogue is articulated with a physical vocabulary of punctuation; disrupting the surface-tension with an undercurrent of comedic timing. These mechanical moves articulately suspend a string of non sequiturs, while encoding personal anecdotes that are simultaneously disconcerting and amusing, revealing and perplexing. Reflecting on constraints placed on the neurodivergent population to exist legibly, I grapple with my own didactic tendencies and question what it means to hold the privilege to consciously choose illegibility. 

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