San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Finding the light
Painter Julia San Roman channels hope and catharsis in her ‘Glimmer’ series, on display at Sparks Gallery
The subjectivity of art often comes down to timing. That is, the way a certain artist or movement’s work can affect the viewer is often highly dependent on what that viewer is going through in their own life.
Julia San Roman had always been peripherally familiar with the iconic California Light and Space movement, the loose collective of regional artists working in the 1960s and ’70s. She recollects that the geometric and illuminative works of artists like James Turrell and Robert Irwin always spoke to her, but never directly informed her own work, which largely consisted of more figurative oil paintings and self-portraits.
But when San Roman’s husband, Brian, was diagnosed with cancer in 2011, she found that the Light and Space movement works just hit her differently.
“I suddenly connected with it so much. I studied the movement as much as I could. I know their work was mainly about perception, but for me, I still found the experience to be so mystical,” says San Roman. “When my husband would sigh from lack of energy from the chemotherapy, I could see a ray of light coming through the clouds. I would often call it the light of hope.”
In fact, it’s easy to detect that “light of hope” in the works that make up San Roman’s “Glimmer” series, which is currently on display at Sparks Gallery through April 25. The abstract pieces, made up of geometric and prismatic rays of light beamed and sometimes overlain on cloud patterns, offer a glimpse into not only San Roman’s artistic journey during her husband’s illness, but also her attempts to remain hopeful after his death.
“I transitioned to ‘Glimmer’ because, at the end of his life, the only thing that would make me happy was my work,” says San Roman, who used a Rothko-like immersion-in-color approach to the paintings. “I needed color, and the only color I could get was from my paint, so I decided to paint the light spectrum.”
The “Glimmer” series is also representative of another step of San Roman’s artistic journey, and a journey that began relatively late in life. While she says she’s always been an artist at heart, San Roman, who is originally from Spain, pursued biology while attending a university in Madrid. She moved to San Diego right out of college after one of her former professors invited her to La Jolla to spend time with his family. She ended up getting an internship at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation.
After gaining her doctorate 10 years down the road, she took a sabbatical from science and began taking art classes at Grossmont College. San Roman says she had been painting before starting classes in Spain, but had put it on the back burner over the years.
“I was transformed by the classes at Grossmont,” says San Roman. “It was an epiphany. I never went back to science except to help my husband part time. I discovered myself. I love science, but my soul is more connected to art.”
Still, once she returned to painting, San Roman says it took her a while to find her artistic voice again. One thing she says has always come naturally was becoming inspired. Before starting art, she’d often travel and take pictures of places and people that inspired her. But when it came to painting, she was often her own worst critic.
“I wanted to do art that had a meaning. Art that spoke of something, not just decoration,” says San Roman. “So I had to work very hard at it.”
Much of San Roman’s early work is more figurative in nature. She’d often use her own body as a model for series such as “Brief ” and “Full Circle,” but only because she didn’t have anyone else to pose for her. She says she “knocked on so many doors” to promote her work, but many people would often take her work to be selfobsessed.
“Even when I started to get known, I still found it wasn’t easy for me,” says San Roman. “I still wonder what it was, but someone once told me that I’m too full of myself and that I only spoke of myself. But for me, contemporary art has to be about the way the artists themselves interiorize the outside. If you don’t put yourself in the work, it’s decoration.”
The “Cante Jondo” (2009) and “Dissasociation” (2011) series were San Roman’s first foray into working outside of figurativism and portraiture. “Disassociation,” with its dark, nimbus cloud formations and obscured hints of sunshine, could easily be seen as a prelude to “Glimmer,” a series she now views as “the trunk, and the rest are branches.”
“(‘Glimmer’) is where I feel I really found myself,” says San Roman. “For me, it is a coming-ofage series. I would continue doing it for the rest of my life.”
In addition to the “Glimmer” exhibition, San Roman will be showing work from her “The Hours” series at “Twenty Women Artists: Now,” a new group exhibition at the Oceanside Museum of Art running through Aug. 1 and opening with a virtual reception March 25. The “Hours” portraits were inspired by her experience working with immigrant workers at a workers’ compensation department at a Chula Vista clinic.
“My work up until now has been very autobiographical, my experiences, and whatever I have inside me,” says San Roman, who plans on continuing “The Hours” to possibly include portraits of children held in U.S. detention. “‘The Hours’ is talking about the immigrant worker, and that is outside of me, but it’s also about my perceptions of them, so in a way, it’s about me.”