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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > December > 09 > Entry
Review: ‘Speed Art: 2003-2009’
A kind of surreal violence has always been present in Julie Speed’s meticulous paintings. Pulling as much from the stylistic influcence of Old Master paintings as she does from the substance current events, the Texas artist has garnered a rapid following for her skewered world view — a view that skitters between the absurd and the anxious but always lands in the anomalous.
The new volume from “Speed Art: 2003-2009” (UT Press, $55; web discount price: $36.85) assembles the artist’s most recent work with a 130 color plates in a gorgeous volume. Yes, the peculiar is still present in Speed’s work. But there’s a new urgency of terrorism and war especially in series such as “Still Life with Suicide Bomber.”
A long-time Austinite, Speed relocated to Marfa a few years ago and the wide open West Texas landscape — with its expansive anonymity — seems to have given the artist — never one to follow convention — even more reason to cut loose.
As a bonus to this volume, writer A. M. Homes contributes a Marfa-based short story, “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” about the investigations of the Phenomena Police. Homes’ story borders on the precious, but matches Speed’s oddball sensibilities,
Former Austin Museum of Art director Elizabeth Ferrer offers an essay that suitably gives some context to Speed’s latest output.
And Speed pens an entertaining essay herself that gives insight to her artistic process. And just what is that insight? “Sometimes pictures come singly, sometimes in series, sometimes from a germ, sometimes from scratch,” writes Speed. “(B)ut always one thing leads to the next in a way that feels inevitable.”
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By Dana Friis-Hansen
December 10, 2009 9:34 AM | Link to this
I love this book! Julie Speed was back in Austin for the Texas Book Festival and gave a great presentation, and she’ll return for a discussion and book signing at the Austin Museum of Art. Thursday December 17 at 6:30! The book makes a great gift, and there is other Julie Speed merchandise in the AMOA Museum Store.