Julian Dourado’s unique work presents to the viewer a visual poetry of colour and symbols evocative of mythic  gardens, animistic landscapes, prophetic dreams, ancient ritual, forgotten knowledge, lost cosmogonies and esoteric philosophies. Each painting is an unique microcosm – a complete and perfected little world in its own right, where the archetypal and universal has united alchemically with the personal and particular.

The small jewel-like semi-abstract oil paintings in this exhibition  have been worked on for many months, even for years. Some of the surfaces are built up meticulously with many thin semitransparent glazes of oil paint, while others are built up with multiple layers of impasto which then are laboriously sanded flat again. Little by little, compositions are carefully fine-tuned, and colours and tones are brought into harmony. When working slowly like this, painting resembles a living process, and each work eventually takes on a life of its own, developing its own particular needs and logic.  This sometimes results in unexpected things never seen nor imagined before but which still manage to give rise to atavistic  feelings of familiarity in the viewer.