Julia Zanes

Julia Zanes grew up in New Hampshire, briefly attended Bennington College and then The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she majored in film and graduated with a traveling fellowship. She and Donald Saaf lived and painted in Mexico, New Orleans, and Nova Scotia, eventually settling in Vermont where they raised their two sons Isak and Ole. Zanes’ work is represented in many private and corporate collections in New England. She has shown regularly at The Clark Gallery in Lincoln MA, as well as several other New England galleries.

“A number of years ago I was taken with a book called Art that Heals, about Ethiopian scrolls. Finding this book coincided with personally being in a place of what can only be called magical thinking. As a result of these two things I was wanting my paintings to do something that was neither intellectual nor aesthetic, primarily—I wanted something practical, personal, and apotropaic, like the scrolls. These scrolls were made for individuals and were unrolled and hung on the wall when illness struck, and, as the title suggests, the scroll owner was healed. I was after that protective, amulet quality that art might always have, but I wanted it to be the primary purpose. I feel that this current body of work reflects that same impulse to make small objects imbued with a (hopefully) positive power. Maybe the less said the better.

A few of these are also connected to a series I made called The Little Flowers of Art History. I printed old art history glass slides with cyanotype onto true gesso, and then painted on top of that. The little whiff of art historical imagery was the center of the flower, and the painting itself was a framing device for the image.

The two paintings, called The Miniature and The Golden Bough, are part of a project about redemption motifs in fairy tales. That is supposed to mean whatever breaks the spell. I am still thinking about this. Generally what breaks the spell is love, in one guise or another. This is very much an idea still in the works as far as my paintings go.”
~Julia Zanes

CV