“I used to believe in every kind of magic. I began it as an investigation. I made the whirling world stand still.” – Arthur Rimbaud.
Drawing on Gothic literature, horror, and the Baroque, my work weaves personal and mythical narratives to explore mourning, legacy, and survival through storytelling. My painted ceramic portraits feature vampires, poets, lambs, and swans. I think of them as little guardian protectors. A recent body of work that showed at ASC’s Courthouse project space contrasted these sculptures with framed sketches of figures lost to time. Drawn from museum pieces, these marginal characters are ghosts speaking through the centuries.
I work as a sculptor, making canvases in ceramic that I house in antique collected frames. I work slips, oxides, and glazes into them to create historical miniatures like Nicholas Hilliard. The figures within champion a life expressed vividly in words, struggling against morbidity to speak of romance, renewal, and love. I am a London-based member of the Royal Society of Sculptors. My work has been in exhibitions including The Horror Show at Somerset House and Delta Gamma at the Saatchi Gallery, featured in the England On Fire anthology, on a cover of The London Magazine, and is held in private collections worldwide.
Julie Goldsmith June 2025