“All my work is a reflection of my overactive imagination.“
Julien is bountifully inspired by the urban life, its movements, flows and changes. The urban universe provides his paintings strong organic dynamics.
What is very positive about Julien’s works is its friendliness to those viewers who have not yet made their essential decision to try to step (or rather jump) across the abyss between the concrete and the abstract. While Julien’s paintings are basically abstract, a viewer, standing in front of them, can mitigate his or her feeling lost or baffled by anchoring in the safe haven of the concrete: figures, landscapes, harmonies and music. But with the bonus of seeing and appreciating abstraction at the same time.
Julien’s style has been influenced by the world-renown artistic movement “Cobra” (1948–1951), with members such as Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky and Asger Jorn. Julien uses primary colours as constitutive elements of his artistic architecture. His paintings refer also to the Dutch artistic movement “De Stijl”, which was founded by such renowned artists as Piet Mondrian, Vilmos Huszár and Theo van Doesburg, in 1917.
Already since his childhood, Julien van Middendorp has experimented with large-scale drawings and watercolours. Later, he studied at the Nimeto, school of design in Utrecht, Netherlands. He has been living and working in Prague for a couple of years now, finding fresh inspiration in the local culture. This inspiration has led to a new collection of oil paintings, which are now presented to the public.
The style that Julien painting is abstract, painted with oil in primary colors on canvas in multiple layers and as less as possible the use of synthetics. Key themes and messages are hidden in the titles of his painting.
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