​​​​​​​Julia Ball

Julia was born in 1930 in Devon and went to Reading Art School where she was particularly drawn to the printing chapel.  Initially a printmaker and secondary school art teacher in London and Cambridge and then took up a post in the 1970’s at what is now Anglia Ruskin University. Julia joined the Cambridge Society of Painters and Sculptors and showed with them at Kettle’s Yard and then at the Fitzwilliam.  She showed regularly at the Old Fire Engine House in Ely.  For a full list of her many exhibitions download a copy of Julia’s CV below.

 

Julia founded the Cambridge Open Studios in 1974 and showed every year at her glorious studio and light-filled house in a converted corner pub near the river.   

 

Julia said that all she ever really wanted to do was to paint. She immersed herself in the landscape of Quay Fen and the North Norfolk coast, extending her palate through travels in Crete, Iran, Africa and the Arctic.and drew on her travels abroad.  A residential on Callanish produced a series of work inspired by stone circles.  She created one portfolio of figurative work entitled Women on the Beach.  Some of her work directly reflected her political engagement with Greenham Common and Grunwick.

She had significant creative relationships with many local artists such as Christine Fox and Nan Youngman, Marie Thompson and Judith Crowe and Audrey Vipond and the most enduring and collaborative, perhaps, was with Elspeth Owen, a potter and activist.  She gave images for poetry publications by Wendy Mulford, Denise Riley, Harriet Tarlo and many others.

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As Julia got older her canvases seemed to get larger and they demand you pay slow, close attention otherwise you will miss the subtle play of shifting light and space that is waiting for you in the work.