GIULIA QUARESIMA

Giulia Quaresima is an Italian portrait and figurative artist living and working in Cambridgeshire, UK.
Her art career includes an extensive education. She graduated with a BA in Painting (Hons) from the Academy of Fine Arts, Carrara, Italy, in 2006 and with a BA (Hons) in Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Pisa, Italy in 2009, before completing her MA in History of Contemporary Art (Hons) at the University of Pisa, Italy in 2012.

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Quaresima’s work has been exhibited in London - Mall Galleries (Women in Art Fair, Society of Women Artists, Society of Graphic Fine Art); The Gallery at Green and Stone, Chelsea - and also across the UK (Royal Cambrian Academy of Art, Conwy, North Wales; Wells Art Contemporary, Wells Cathedral, Somerset; The Gallery, Holt) - and internationally too (Palazzo Arese Borromeo, Cesano Maderno, Italy; Italian Culture Institute Gallery, Cracow, Poland; Petrartedizioni Art Gallery, Pietrasanta, Italy).
 

Quaresima is a member of The Cambridge Drawing Society, and an Associate Member of The Society of Graphic Fine Art (SGFA).

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She has received a special commendation from the Institute of East Anglian Artists as a result of her entry in the IEA Open Exhibition 2022.

She has been shortlisted out of 836 entries as one of the 11 finalists of the London Graphic Centre Art Prize 2023 sponsored by Theo Paphitis.

Next October, she will be featuring as one of the contestants on Sky Portrait Artist of the Year 2024.

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"My artistic activity focuses on figurative subjects, particularly portraits and the human form; in the last couple of years I deepened my love for drawing, and I now mostly work using coloured pencils and charcoal, a combination of materials able to express perfectly the feeling behind my inspiration, made of memories, personal experiences, and unspoken emotions".

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"In the middle of my drawing process, I like scratching the surface and making marks with sand paper, in order to create a more uneven surface to draw on and to give a general movement to the composition. Only few details are on focus, while everything else is just a blur.

This personal technique I developed allows me to give the viewer the illusion that my sitters are either emerging or disappearing in this vortex of lines. In order to reveal these lines, I have to start dancing with my hands on the paper, dragging the charcoal powder around the surface till it gets inside the marks I created. It's only at that stage that they become visible.
I like to see this moment as a sort of performance art, probably influenced by my love for dancing, and my past as a dance teacher".

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"The relentless passage of time, loneliness, solitude, the love/sacrifice behind motherhood, the fascinating moment of conception, the power of gesture and body language to express emotions and feelings, are some of my favourite subjects.

In my latest series, I  put a lot of emphasis on my sitters' hands and eyes, preferring close-ups, unusual and striking compositions that turn into timeless, universal themes which everybody can relate to". ​​

"Self-portraits have also been over the years a crucial part of my artistic activity as they represent a recurring source of practice (with a model always available) and an exercise of truthiness, as it forces to examine myself in a way I normally wouldn't, analysing my deepest and inner fears and turmoils".

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