The Secret Painting

Juliet James is a figurative and semi-abstract painter, based in South East England. Her work is characterised by minimalistic, fluid lines in a monochrome palette which are often injected with flashes of vibrant, textural colour. Favoured subject matter includes playfully erotic, sensual nudes and semi abstract plants and birds, depicted merging into negative space or camouflaged against bold areas of geometric pattern. Juliet’s artwork references early 20th Century European modern art and mid-later 20th Century pop culture as key influences. Her paintings are injected with subtle humour and subversive twists, as a tongue-in-cheek redefinition of the concept of erotica and the male gaze (as portrayed by a female artist). Juliet is a graduate of Central St Martins College of Art and Design (UAL), where she gained a BA Honours degree in Fashion and Print Design. She has enjoyed a varied career across several fields of art and design, now focussing exclusively on painting. In 2018 Juliet had two paintings, the Garden of Venus and Hot Pants (Replication II), selected by Grayson Perry to hang in the Central Gallery of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, as part of the 250th Summer Exhibition. Juliet currently works from her studio at Thames-side Studios in London and divides her time between the city and East Sussex. She has appeared in a number of group exhibitions, and her work hangs in private collections across Europe and the USA.