Julie Oldfield SWA is a mixed media artist deeply connected to the natural environment, a bond forged during her rural childhood and life on the Jurassic Coast. She built her artistic foundation at art college and through a successful career in commercial interior design, before establishing the Blue Lias Gallery in Lyme Regis in 1996. Since 2003, she has focused entirely on her own practice, pioneering new techniques that bridge the gap between ancient alchemy and contemporary landscape painting. Over the past two decades, her artistic journey has led her across six continents, where encounters with astonishing landscapes and cultures have profoundly influenced her visual language. Julie’s work is not intended as a literal record of these places but rather as an emotional response to the transient moods of the atmosphere. She specialises in capturing the "escapist" quality of vast skies and horizons, seeking to evoke a sense of meditation in the viewer through the interplay of light and texture. Her creative process is a unique collaboration with science and nature. Moving beyond traditional canvas, Julie works primarily on copper and brass sheets, treating them with a complex array of catalytic processes including direct heat from bonfires, acids, alkalis, and natural weathering. By leaving materials exposed to the elements in her garden studio, she allows organic patterns of oxidisation to form. She then refines these foundations with oil glazes, spray paints, and pastels, often scraping back layers to reveal the raw lustre of the metal beneath. Julie’s distinctive work has been showcased nationally and internationally in solo and mixed exhibitions. Her innovative approach has earned her significant acclaim, including her election as a member of the Society of Women Artists (SWA) in 2022 and the Derwent Special Fine Art Award. Her paintings are held in numerous private collections, reflecting her growing stature as a pioneer of metal-based mixed media art.