As a colorist and abstract artist, the act of painting, for me, must honor the lush beauty and tactility of paint, its marks and its surprises. Further, I watch for a resonating spiritual space to come into focus. A painting is not complete until the space holds together and I see something thrilling that I've never seen before.

More recently, finding myself bumping against the limits of my invention and the shallow abstract space, I turned to landscape for ideas. These smaller landscapes and abstracts, which are being shown at the Calvary Presbyterian Church, led me to discover the direction of my current work.

As a teaching experiment, I cut and collaged a painting of an organ pipe cactus. To my surprise, the abstraction held more space than any other I had created. The sky, the naturalistic colors, and the range of textures had retained nature's spaciousness even when torn apart.

I became immersed in exciting possibilities as nature's referents freed me from self-consciousness while abstraction freed me from tedium. Striking images from the dry west (my heartland) alternated with fluid scenes of the wet north (my homeland). This series of "abstract landscapes," on view at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Indiana, were painted in three passionate months between November 2005 and February 2006.

My intention lies not in representing landscape per se, but in using the majesty of nature as an endless resource for exploring painterly beauty through dramatic scale, delicious textures, rich variety and detail, stirring composition and, most wonderfully, spatial depth.

About the Artist:

Julie Bernstein Engelmann earned her M.F.A. in Art from UCLA. She serves as president of the Indiana Art Association, is a board member of the Indiana Arts Council, and teaches community art classes. Her artwork can be viewed at www.julieengelmann.com.