159. Julie Caves - Epping Forest Summer

2026
Oil on panel
10 x 7.5 x 2 cm

Julie Caves is a Margate-based artist whose vibrant, light-filled paintings explore the space between still life and abstraction. Drawing on a background in both painting and curating, her practice focuses on the everyday objects that populate domestic life, distilling them into meditations on colour, light, rhythm, and form.

Through layered compositions and intuitive arrangements, Caves transforms familiar objects into dynamic painterly structures that hover between recognition and abstraction. Her work is characterised by vivid palettes, playful spatial relationships, and a sensitivity to surface and atmosphere, creating paintings that celebrate perception, pleasure, and the emotional resonance of ordinary things.

Caves completed the Turps Studio Painting Programme (2017–2019), a two-year alternative MA, following an Independent Curating certificate at Central Saint Martins (2012), an MA at Camberwell College of Art, University of the Arts London (2004), and a BFA (Hons) in Studio Art at the University of Texas at Austin (2001). She also studied Studio Art at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain (2001).

Selected solo and two-person exhibitions include Love is the Answer at Futurelove, Off Season Margate (2026); Sea Change at Joseph Wales, Margate (2025); Tasting at Mori Mori, Off Season Margate (2025); Scrumptious at Convivium Gallery, Leytonstone, London (2024); Yummy Yummy Yummy at Cliffs, Margate (2024); Shimmy at Lido Stores, Margate (2022); Lost in the Woods at Stone Space Gallery, London (2021); Of All the Possibilities with Daniela Rizzi at Pictorem Gallery, London (2017); After the Sea at Bernie’s, Margate (2016); Painting Without Beginning or End at Heathcote Arms, London (2016); Colourful Language at Hoe Street Central, Walthamstow (2015); and Curiosity: an art practice as a way of looking at The Crypt Gallery, London (2013).

Her extensive exhibition history includes presentations at Hastings Contemporary, Arnolfini Bristol, Flowers Gallery, Studio1.1 Gallery, Terrace Gallery, APT Gallery, Pictorem Gallery, Artworks Project Space, Bell House, Lido Stores, and numerous artist-led spaces across London, Margate, and the UK.

Recent group exhibitions include Small Prophets at Artworks Project Space, London (2026); Contrariwise at Studio1.1 Gallery, London (2026); Micromania at Kalkman Gallery, Maastricht (2026); Vice Versa at Terrace Gallery, London (2025); Art on a Postcard IWD at The Bomb Factory, London (2025); A Generous Space at Hastings Contemporary (2021); Artist of the Day (Turps Painters) at Flowers Gallery, London (2018); and the Delphian Open Call Winners Exhibition at Printspace, London (2019).