Jack # Elizabeth Stride 2001

Julie Roberts made this drawing, Jack # Elizabeth Stride, on paper in 1999-2001, and right away I’m thinking about the way art-making is a process of layering, of adding marks, one at a time, until something emerges. The texture here is key—it’s smooth, subtle, made up of these delicate lines that give the whole image a kind of eerie glow, which is really emphasized by the whited-out eyes, right? Look at the way the light seems to emanate from her face, especially around the forehead. It’s like she’s both there and not there, present but also fading away. Roberts' work often deals with themes of vulnerability and the human body and there's a feeling that Robert's drawing is an echo of a distant scream. Like a Francis Bacon painting but much quieter. We’re left with this sense of unease, a question mark hanging in the air, about the stories we tell and the stories we leave untold.