Julie Leach

Julie Leach is an artist printmaker who works with the elements, primarily the wind, to document the invisible forces of nature. Her interests lie in exploring phenomena of transience, ephemerality and intangibility. By facilitating “nature as artist” she creates drawings, screen prints and etchings that express extraordinary lightness, energy and movement.

Greatly influenced by eastern philosophy which embraces impermanence and fragility as central tenets, Julie aspires to express these qualities in both the concept and the aesthetic of her work. She has long been interested in visual expressions of the elusive and the immaterial with existing bodies of work exploring memory, loss, altered identities and the edges of existence. Her current work focusses on enabling the invisibility of elemental energy to become visible, offering an impactful connection with the natural world and beyond.

Drawing is the starting point of all Julie’s work. She facilitates nature as the artist to create the drawings through direct engagement with the processes of the natural world. Sometimes she works with pleasant summer breezes, at other times with wild storms in wind speeds of over 50 mph. The drawings are made through a collaboration between the energy of the wind and the plant that the wind is blowing through. The marks thus made are a direct expression of the wind, not that of the human conscious mind or hand.

The physical connection of working outside in often challenging conditions is part of the adventure of the process for Julie. The sense of freedom, risk and the wildness of nature provides a sensory experience at odds with the domestic, the comfortable or the virtual. Relinquishing control and responsibility to the forces of nature offers a sense of personal perspective, a balance to the egocentric, pressurised momentum of contemporary society.

An MA Printmaking graduate with distinction, Julie was awarded a RBSA Print Prize in 2018. She has exhibited in both public and private galleries in the UK and internationally and has work in the Sayer Collection in London.