Ammar Karim 2012-11-22 23:43:03

El Pensamiento del Julia or Julia’s Thought created by Belkis Ramirez from the Dominican Republic in 1991.

This painting was created though woodcutting. This entails carving a woodblock, wetting it with paint and pressing it against paper. Ramirez used only black to paint Julia’s Thought. This painting is several feet long, reaching from the floor to the ceiling

At first glance, what struck me was the length of the painting. Although only a couple feet wide, it extended from the floor to the ceiling. In Julia’s Thought, Ramirez paints a woman with his eyes closed. Although her eyes are closed, it is hard to believe that she is sleeping because her hands are clasped and she is resting her chin against them giving the image of a woman attempting to rest. However, drawn from her scalp to the top of the painting are hundreds random images ranging from an old man with a walking stick to an airplane to an umbrella. This extension from the scalp and the title imply that these are the thoughts of “Julia”. Even more interesting was the choice of medium by Ramirez. Woodcutting had lost its popularity in the 1500s, so to use it was a purposeful and clever choice. I felt as if by choosing woodcutting, Ramirez framed a single second of Julia’s thought process in wood. To extrapolate this idea would leave us in awe of how much is going through our mind in 5 seconds; 30 seconds; 5 minutes…needless to say, a lot. In this painting, Ramirez makes an interesting point on man’s ability to rest even with too much on our mind at any given moment.