Stanley Picker Gallery

‘As a practitioner teacher I have enjoyed an immensely rewarding career so far. From exhibiting in New York, Boston and Germany to welcoming superstars Gilbert and George into my home with my family at the inauguration of the infamous ‘Toilet Gallery’. My professional career as an artist has been unusual, varied and continues to excite.

Trained at the Slade School home of my boyhood hero Stanley Spencer (my studio was downstairs, around the corner from the toilets he used to use – variously). Taught by Reg Butler and his gifted team I was fortunate to receive some of the most incisive but understated tuition possible.

Working with students myself nothing makes me prouder than when they achieve personal success. It thrills me to death! I love the day to day game of educational ping pong where tutor and student bounce ideas off each other – can there be anything more rewarding?

I’m currently working on a series of floor pieces that are a marriage of my love for football and my drive to produce my artworks. I am in the process of planning and exhibition in Hiroshima, Japan, at the ‘Incinerator Gallery which is likely to involve the use of molten lead as a drawing tool to produce floor based molten drawings of iconic footballing figures George Best, David Beckham and Syunsuke Nakamura. The drawings will be as transient as a moment in time when athlete and ball produce wonder in a 13 year old lad’s life. The drawings will come and go, be swept away to leave no tangible record, just a memory of a magical moment. I am blessed in that all I enjoy has been encouraged, all that I have taught has (mostly) been listened to and all those I love have given me time to indulge my various passions from opening a gallery in a toilet to producing artworks that frankly may have been good, bad or indifferent, who cares, either way they are mine!’

Selected Exhibitions:
2005 Lock in Toilet Gallery London
2001 Self Portraits Flowers East Gallery London
1996 Art Expo New York
1994 Witness Bosnia The Riechstag, Germany
1991 Best of Britain Sheraton Galleries, Boston

Julie Held is a painter working whose compositions are both figurative and abstract, with colour playing a central role in the evocation of her observed world. She studied at Camberwell and the Royal Academy Schools, and has  exhibited in many group exhibitions including The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, The London Group Exhibitions, The Jerwood Drawing Prize, The Threadneedle Prize, Flower Central and The Barbican, London.

Amongst her solo shows she has exhibited in Prague, Leipzig and Hamburg.  Her work is held in a number of public collections, including Nuffield College, Oxford, New Hall, Cambridge, The Open University, and the Ben Uri Art Museum collection.

Selected Exhibitions:
2007 Regard and Ritual Julie Held and Shanti Panchal, The Ben Uri Gallery, London
2003 The City of Leipzig-Deutsche Telecom University. Commission to commemorate 700 year anniversary St. Richard of Chichester
1998 The Frank Kafka Gallery, Prague
1998 The City Library, Leipzig