Artist Statement

Although she first put oil to canvas less than a year ago, Lauren Julien [born 1983] has been creating art since before she could speak. Whether it was bleeding wax crayon-polychromasia onto reams of computer paper her father had brought home - an infantile Lauren scribbling along with Dylan rheuming on her mother’s hi-fi - or interpreting a mound of corrugated cardboard as something dark and sentient in her sketch pad with Jefferson Airplane beating through her headphones, music and art have always been interminably conjoined for her.

“I remember when music had a conscience, and music had soul and music had balls, man. Does anyone remember that at all?” – Bill Hicks

As she grew older, the gravity of the music she’d adored since birth became clearer and its undeniable social and political impact moved her to learn more about the artists. From there she resolved to attempt to translate the power of the words and sound into a visual expression of what the experience of listening was like to her. It became her undertaking to render the splendor of the music and words in a way that also expressed the inherent beauty of their composer by creating portraits of her most admired poets, in a style as undulating, honest and captivatingly lewd as the songs themselves.

Though this is her first formal show, Lauren’s work has already been widely recognized. At age 16, she received a scholarship to take classes at the Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, and her pieces have placed in countless contests throughout the states. She has worked on commissions for fashion and interior designers and she plans to become an influential artist and non-fiction novelist when she grows up.