Julia Soderholm
Julia Soderholm (b.1991) is a painter based in Vancouver, BC. Originally from Ontario, she is currently an MFA candidate at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Her work explores how the abstraction of landscape fosters an experience of re-enchantment with the natural world. Using an invented lexicon of colour, gesture, and shape, she translates her experience of the observable world into newly imagined forms.
Through an intuitive accumulation of layered paint and highly saturated colour-patches, these paintings transmute memories of light, leaf, and loam onto the canvas. They describe the blue of twilight, the slash of cloud in the dawn sky, and the distant view of water between trees. The use of repeated marks and touchstone colours ground Julia’s work in a diaristic practice of collecting visual notations from the landscape that she later works into her paintings. These loose, luminous compositions invite the viewer to re-consider their perception of landscape, and gesture towards the possibility of seeing with fresh eyes.
The day comes with a colour
May 14 - June 27, 2026
The day comes with a colour marks the first solo exhibition of Julia Soderholm with the gallery. We have been paying close attention to Julia's work since our first studio visit over two years ago and we are excited for introducing her vivid and energetic palette to our audience.
The paintings included in The day comes with a colour emerge from daily observation of the colours and shapes at play in the landscape. From the warm green of spruce tips, to the pale yellow of sunlight at mid-day, this body of work reflects the transition from winter into spring. The title of the show comes from W.S. Merwin’s poem, Sky in September, which ends with the line: “and at last we are together/light of autumn/clear morning in the only time.” His words speak to my experience of quiet, alert attunement to the natural world from which this work originates.
The paintings included in The day comes with a colour emerge from daily observation of the colours and shapes at play in the landscape. From the warm green of spruce tips, to the pale yellow of sunlight at mid-day, this body of work reflects the transition from winter into spring. The title of the show comes from W.S. Merwin’s poem, Sky in September, which ends with the line: “and at last we are together/light of autumn/clear morning in the only time.” His words speak to my experience of quiet, alert attunement to the natural world from which this work originates.
|
On Thursday I stopped by @monicareyesgallery for the opening of a new suite of paintings by Julia Soderholm. A painting that caught my eye was a stacked landscape -- ocean, city and sky -- called A little luminous body (2026, oil on canvas, 66.5"x59"). Stylistically, the painting contains carefully measured elements of Post-Impressionism and mid-century abstraction, and feels very much here and then, as in Vancouver, yet with a view beyond, and an imagined view at that. In the middle section I feel the city, with a lined road linking it and the ocean. British Columbia has had a long abstracted landscape tradition -- from Emily Carr to mid-century Gordon Smith to late-century Jack Shadbolt. Soderholm's painting would not look out of place among the work of these giants. Michael Turner Art critic and writer |
