Julia Rommel

These new paintings expose my struggles with color – an unfamiliar battle, going back and forth, surface demanding colors, colors demanding surfaces, an untidy state of things. And to keep it going, I must go to all my sources: Albers and Matisse, Color-aid, friends’ advice – I need their help – it is not instinctive. But I’ll change the painting many times, and the final acceptance is instinctive. And what is that? I don’t know, but it is not about the colors being harmonious or good (my sources are never the answer). I keep going to the point when, I think, the painting has a character despite its colors, or despite its entire self. I am suspicious that it is about the very color battle, it being so mysterious and difficult for me, diverting my attention from the other qualities of the painting, allowing them to take form without my constant judgment. My attention is pushed around and manipulated and hidden from myself as much as any other material – I am taken away from myself, and that is good. And then, the surface displays the unexpected history of an action, and whether the marks happened by accident or chance or absent-minded aggression, color once again has to make them work, make them belong, I enter into the mindspace of this battle and the cycle continues.

— J.Rommel, 2013