Julie Heaton

Julie is an RCA graduate living and working in Bristol. With a drawing practice grounded in free machine embroidery, Julie uses art to navigate traumatic loss.

With an intimacy of thought, Julie stitches obsessively, embodying in thread words that can be hard to say.

Loss through suicide has an unimaginable impact on being. Enduring the complicated, layered effects that overwhelming sadness has on the body and mind, Julie was compelled to create.

Without limitation and with a need to break the silence, Julie unravelled her own story with thread.

Julie is a UK artist who uses creativity to navigate traumatic loss. In 2009, her husband Carl ended his life through suicide. He was 43 and the father of their young sons.

Using stitch, Julie creates photorealistic drawings with free machine embroidery on water-soluble fabric. Working obsessively, Julie stitches meticulously until all control is dispensed with in the final stage of making when the supporting canvas is washed away.

In 2023, Julie graduated from the Royal College of Art. For two years she didn’t stitch. Using mark making and print, Julie questioned her practice, unveiled her voice and found courage to express what had previously been too hard to say. Julie’s Hand and Lock entry is her bravest work to date. Whilst her process continues to allude to how she has lived her life in the wake of suicide loss, it is no longer silent. Intimately personal, Julie’s embroidered drawing focuses on her scoliotic spine, using the changes to her form as a parable for the unseen effects that the traumatic loss has had on her body and mind. With a carefully considered pose, Julie offers up her own conversation, one that might be difficult for some but compelling for others.