OXIDANT | ENGINE : Artist Feature
Oxidant | Engine features one artist's artwork for the cover of each issue for one year (3 web issues and 1 boxset.) For our second year the featured artist is Julia Haw.
Julia Haw (b. 1982, Flint, MI) attended Western Michigan University with a concentration in painting and is recognized for creating bold memory-staining paintings. She addresses personal issues and immediate Western norms, as well as particular global influences, utilizing political and historical realities, social interactions and humor. Haw additionally examines overt topics such as feminism, ageism, intimacy, control and death by honing in on the seemingly mundane aspects or objects in a culture that are laced with undertones of those political and social themes, such as a Kleenex box or air conditioner. Oil paint on cotton or linen is her mainstay medium, and she works in a forthright honest manner, in order to achieve direct empathetic coverage. Haw has achieved considerable viewer pause by way of highly dedicated work habits, specific color use, authenticity, and by balancing tense subject matter with humor. Her paintings tend to function as highly relatable, ensuing discussion amongst viewers, and bringing the public forum necessarily back. To see more of her work, go to http://www.juliahaw.com/
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Brandon Rushton sat down to interview Julia and they talked about perception, imagination, and the Midwest. Check out the interview here.
Cambodian Smile 2017 12x16in.
Oil on Arches 100% Cotton Oil Paper
For each Issue Julia will be choosing one of her paintings based on the poetry in that issue.
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Issue 5: Yet Each Man 2012 8.5x11in Oil on Paper Collection of Annette Sollars
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I chose my oil painting “Yet Each Man,” to pair with Rob Wilson Engle’s poems regarding love, specifically “The Way you Leave is a Kind of Staying." This piece, originally based on “The Ballad of the Reading Gaol” by the brilliant Oscar Wilde, falls in line with Engle’s poems as well, in that “yet each man kills the thing he loves…” Love leaves us with a stain, a sorrowful empty gap in the bed next to us. Love can be cruel and devastating, with the one leaving to appear at times as a villain and uncouth. The piece is also highly personal, as during this time period I was experiencing someone I loved very much choosing to walk away. He was absorbed in life’s distractions, represented by the stacks of books around him, as well as the lack of head. The repeating deadly trumpet flower in the background is a metaphor for extinguished love.
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Issue 6: Mr. Clapsaddle's House 2015 10.5x14.25, Acrylic on Acid-Free Arches Paper
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Issue 7: Lost in the Fires 2018 30x30in, Oil on Self Primed Cotton Canvas
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BoxSet Series Volume 2: Enveloped or How I Felt With You 2007-2012 30x40in, Oil on Canvas
To see prior Artist Feature's, click here.