The Show

Meet the Artists

Your Portraits

From drawing the side view of the batmobile to working for the Boston Globe and The New York Times, Todd Julie discusses his art career with Star Portraits.

SP: How did you become interested in art?

TJ: I have always been interested in art. I drew skeletons between the ages of four to eight, and then Batman and the side view the Batmobile until 14. It was at this time that my mom decided I should attend an “enriched art high school”. I started drawing a bunch of other stuff - really got into life drawings. After high school, I attended Sheridan College for commercial illustration - which is what I now do to make money. Basically, I’ve been doing it as far back as I can remember.

SP: At what point did you decide you wanted to become a professional artist?

TJ: I started to have it in my head towards the end of high school - it seemed like the natural thing to do, coming from an art high school. Then I went to art college – I had a shaky start but by the end of the program, but was probably one of the better artists graduating. Next, I decided to go into commercial illustration The first time I really felt professional was in 2003 when I won the National Magazine Award for Best Spot Illustration, and then in 2005 I won the ADCC award for relatively the same category, so at that point I really felt like a professional artist.

SP: You've worked for a lot of big companies, can you tell us about some of them?

TJ: I worked for them quite a while ago, I've worked for Report on Business Magazine and won the ADCC award. Also, I have worked for the Boston Globe, American Airlines, The Washington Post, The New York Times.

SP: What's difference between working for a client and working for yourself?

TJ: With the big clients, we're usually trying to illustrate an article - we come up with two or three different ideas. We try to create some kind of synthesis with the ideas that will enhance the article. In terms of my fine art painting, it's just figurative - there isn't much of an idea. I don't really try to do "ideas" in my fine art work, it's just straight.

SP:What are the different techniques that you bring into your art?

TJ: Both my commercial and my fine art work are mixed media, although more so in my commercial work. My fine art is collage and acrylic paint. The collage is used to break up the painting, so that it doesn't feel as stagnant... I feel like it engages the viewer to make sense of the areas in the painting that are abstract. I feel the collage gets people’s attention a lot more; they can engage with the painting and fill in some of the blanks, so I keep some elements of the likeness obscure in order for them to do that. I also try to produce really solid realism in other elements.

SP: You mentioned that you use photocopy transfers, can you explain what that is?

TJ: I haven't used photocopy transfers in a large scale painting in a long time but I use it in my commercial work pretty frequently. It's a really simple technique. You can buy a marker called a "blender marker" at most art stores, it’s completely translucent. You take a photocopy on an old black and white carbon photocopiers, put that face down on an illustration board, or canvas, or whatever your working on, and just colour over with the translucent marker. It'll transfer the photocopy on to your board, in the same way a temporary tattoo would. I find it gives the painting a really nice kind of gritty, grey, almost machine like quality that's very different from the sort of fluid kind of way that I paint, so it creates a really nice contrast within the piece.

SP: Have you ever in the past painted a series?

TJ: The first round of serious portraits that I did was actually the first solo show I ever had - there were about 15 to 17 portrait paintings, all done in the same style, so I would consider that a series. Not a series tied together by a theme, they were a series of portrait paintings, but done so close in succession to one another that they were really similar and you could really see the exploration of the technique in them. It was one of the most creatively satisfying things I've done. The new series I'm doing is a series of bathing suit portraits, so now I have a theme - it's portraits, but it's also all people in bathing suits.

SP: So solo art shows, how is that? Can you explain the process a bit?

TJ: I actually don't like it that much. It was cool to do that first show because it was the impetus to do all that work, so in that way its good, but with solo shows unless your really famous, unless you're an "art star", I find it really limits the people that come to see your work. When I did my first solo show at The Academy of Spherical Arts, Steve Nash's charity basketball thing was there, so they all got to see it, which was nice, but on the opening the only people who came were my friends and relatives. I prefer to do group shows because you get to poach other people's fans!

SP: You had an exhibit in Nuit Blanche. What that was like?

TJ: I'll explain it but it doesn't really have to do with painting.

I got really interested in, what I guess I'll call, “social participatory art”. I’ve read Darren O'Donnell's book Social Acupuncture - it's all about audience engagement and making a piece that relies on the audience to complete the other half of the work. When Nuit Blanche came around, a friend and I decided to do a "Secular Confession Booth". It's exactly like it sounds - we constructed a confession booth and we had friends on one side of it. They were partially obscured by a canvas so you could tell there was a person there, but you couldn't tell who they were - we allowed people to come in and confess whatever they wanted to confess.

SP: Was it a great experience?

TJ: It was. The solo show was one of the most satisfying experiences I've had, but the Secular Confession Booth was the second major gratifying experience I've had. We had a lot of fun doing it - I'd like to do more of that sort of thing in the future.

SP: Were your parents supportive in your quest to be an artist?

TJ: They encouraged me when I was a kid to go into arts; my parents are pretty great. They are encouraging no matter what, but of course parents want to see you settled so I think it's a bit of a roller coaster ride for my parents for me to be living this kind of bohemian lifestyle.

SP: Where do you see yourself going in the future?

TJ: I see myself approaching art in a more fun, lighthearted kind of way and not taking myself too seriously. I've decided to pursue my own development and kind of have fun with it and just get back to the reason I started doing art, which was just for the fun of it - the fun of making marks on a blank piece of paper.

Artist Stats

Beginning as a young child with crayon in hand, Todd Julie has always been a portrait painter.  He is enchanted by the human face and strives to capture the spirit and likeness of his subject.  Using a mix of acrylic paint and collage, Todd strikes a balance in his work between realistic representation and obscure abstraction.

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