Artist Julia Lara: Dreamscapes And Street Art

After finishing her studies at the Fine Arts School of San Carlos in Valencia, local artist Julia Lara worked in the fields of education and arts and culture in various countries across Latin America. Nowadays she is based in Barcelona and has earned her success through illustrating children’s books and exhibitions across Spain, including a number of galleries in Barcelona and international art fairs in London and Austria.
Despite her background in Fine Arts, Julia Lara has always been drawn to experimenting with new creative processes, based on her creative instincts and the blending of pictorial techniques, which lend her work a great sense of freedom. Her style is marked by surrealist images, where symbols and forms create a dreamscape, through forms inspired by the world of animals and plants, or human-like figures. She creates a dialogue between them through the interplay of spaces and colors.

Describing the creative process in her own words, Julia explains, “For me, the creative process encloses itself and this is the most important part of the work itself. Any creative process is translatable to its own specific area of freedom, where self-expression takes the form of its own language, at the time using and organizing the various elements that shape the world of the image: the subject matter, the concept, the aesthetics, the form or the materials and the techniques.
“I like to paint without rules; every work is born of a small idea that takes form during the creative process. There, it doesn’t matter much what it does, it only matters how it does, how it enjoys its organic freedom.I pay special attention to the organization of the different elements that give shape to the idea (the shape, line, color, texture, composition, etc.), looking for a unique type of unison, of sense.

“My sources of inspiration are the most contemporary artistic currents, such as design, illustration, comics or even street art, as well as music or literature.”
“When I paint, I usually prefer to mix techniques, because it enables me to use the material or method best adapted to each work, so that the work speaks for itself and strengthens its expressiveness and meaning. I use acrylic, glazes, water-colors, Indian ink, spray, silk-screen printing, felt-tip pens, or graphite and linen.”
When talking about the influence of street art on her work Julia explains that: “Across the urban art scene, the driving idea of ‘do it yourself’really gives me freedom. The merging of different artistic techniques allows me not to be labeled as belonging to any particular genre or style, although it also allows me to demonstrate the clear urban influence – the work as a result of contemporary territory around us.”