About the artist
History
Julia Baxter lives in the Cinque Ports Town of Sandwich, Kent, in the South East of England. It is here that she works from her home studio as a professional Calligrapher, Artist and Tutor of Calligraphy. Her love of the writing really began at her Primary School where she was lucky enough to be taught Italic Handwriting. Combined with her love of art she went on to study Graphic Design at Maidstone College of Art and achieved a BA (Hons) Degree. After this she attended Adult Education classes in Calligraphy, where her obsession for this subject began to flourish and she then achieved an Intermediate Diploma from the Calligraphy and Lettering Arts Society, London. Very recently she has become a CLAS Fellow. For over 15 years she has been developing her lettering skills to a high standard and for 15 years has taught calligraphy classes to both adults and children. She is a member of the Kent based calligraphy society The Cinque Ports Scribes of which she has been chairman.
Statement
Her art works are a visual expression of an interaction between the freedom of fine art and the discipline of a craft. The images involve letters, words and text with colour and imagery using her calligraphic skills in a variety of mediums including watercolours, gouaches, gold leaf and oils onto canvass, paper, cloth and stone. She uses a variety of traditional and modern writing tools including metal nibs, quills and both square and pointed brushes. She is inspired by words and excited by letter design and the liveliness of hand written forms. Even though her training is with traditional skills and techniques of calligraphy, she explores new ways to express and evoke words, often concentrating on the rhythmical and textural qualities of letterforms, and enjoys working spontaneously often creating abstraction with layers and movement. Often texts are combined with imagery where there is more of an illustrative interpretation of words and moods. She is equally interested in celebrating the rich history of calligraphy and creatively showing fine distinctions between the old and new. Where ancient scribes' first concerns were probably not individual expression there remains the same sense of aesthetics that is uniquely satisfying. In a world disenfranchised by computer processed words and digital graphics, Julia combines her skills using eye, mind and hand in direct contact with each surface.
Julia also demonstrates as a medieval scribe and illuminator at historial events and also teaches in schools and to adult groups this period of hand writing along with the decorative skills applied to a manuscript page (see teaching/demonstrating). She can now be seen demonstrating at the Sandwich Medieval Centre.
