JULIE SPEED

Speed’s morality then, comes down to the individual. With her paintings, whether of figures bearing the scars of some unknowable trauma or of groups engaged in absurd acts of violence, Speed emphatically suggests that the stakes for the future of humanity have become too high. She tackles the big issues by revealing the human condition in its most raw states, whether at extremes of lucidity, bafflement, or arrogance. It is in these most intense moments of intellectual and psychological engagement that life has the greatest potential for good or evil. And Speed, who thinks with incredible breadth and circularity, would take us back to Kasimir Malevich and to his mission of articulating a form of art based on pure feeling. Malevich concluded that an abstract language best suited such a quest. Speed, even if known for her figurative painting, doesn’t necessarily come down on one side or the other; some of her mixed-media works and sculptures are highly abstract. But in her painting, pure emotion is just that, displayed starkly on the faces of imperfect characters. This is why the act of painting, and the ability to paint well, remains such a high priority to her artistic practice – it allows her to invent figures that can most vividly reflect life stripped to its bare essentials. Neither real nor unreal, they just exist timelessly, before history and after history, defiantly beating the odds.

Elizabeth Ferrer

(excerpt from The Moral Painter: The Art of Julie Speed by Elizabeth Ferrer)