Julie tells the origin of the Bridges paintings:

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    In Paris, across from the Louvre, is Sennelier, a tiny, crowded art shop established in 1887. I went there to buy oil pastels, the luscious oil colour sticks Sennelier created at the request of Picasso. On a quiet October morning, I had just come out of Sennelier and was walking along the Seine when I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. On the bridge, Le Pont du Carrousel, there was a team of men in red wetsuits. One by one, they climbed over the railing and jumped off the bridge. Then they bobbed up and swam a short distance down the Seine to the next bridge. I was fascinated by the different jumping style of each man. I imagined what it would be like in circumstances other than a French training exercise. I imagined women jumping.

 

    Some bridges in my series of paintings are based on real bridges – from the Granville St. bridge in Vancouver  to the Jiraskuv bridge in Prague, and some are based on entirely imaginary bridges. A bridge is a connector between land, air, and water. It’s a human-built structure that alters our connection to the environment. To jump off a bridge instead of crossing it is a transgression of the norm, and a shortcut passage from one plane and one element to another.  In art, it’s an image of deliberate change. There are fourteen Bridges paintings completed 2005-2007.; there’s  a bird in each painting. These watercolours are  20.5”h x 14”w. The Bridges paintings were exhibited in a room constructed with a water feature at the Metafour Show, Mayne Island Hall in summer, 2007.