Julio Césartist: visual artist

Everyone has a story. Social photographer and artist Julio César Osorio can take six months to produce his highly coloured canvases. Here he talks about how he got into art mid-career. Interview by Nicola Baird

If it wasn’t raining so much in early summer 2024 I’d have met Julio César Osorio in Highbury Fields on a walk with his Romanian rescue dog, Bumble. But this bad weather  inspired Julio to take a camper van to the sunny south of Spain for the summer, so we organise a Zoom interview. We talk while he’s on the beach in sunglasses and I’m indoors. In Spain he’s planning to research and document Flamenco-loving Gypsies and work on his Golden Years painting series – portraits of over 60-year-olds. He’ll also be selling exuberant chokers, Carmensitas Tribe the leather accessories that are hand crafted by the Norther Colombian single mothers co-operative. He says the chokers are, “adorned with raw gemstones and quartz crystal bead that make each piece a statement piece, unique and shows the ethos of his fashion with a purpose brand”. It’s the kind of jewellery that sun-lovers adore, but didn’t sell so well in drizzly Portobello Market.

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Julio, 53, began painting when he was “in prison after an altercation with a night club doorman that assaulted me in 2012.” Until this shock his career was more about photography of younger people growing up in challenging situations, launched after studying photography and digital imaging at university, the Surrey Institute of Art and Design in Croydon.

For the past 11 years he hasn’t stopped painting and last year (2023) was a runner up for the Best Professional Artist of 2023 by the Visual Artist Association for his Golden Year series.

He also won awards as the most innovative abstract artist of the year for his Desire series. ABSTRACT | Juliocesartist (juliocesarts.com)

Since lockdown, after his beloved Grandmother died, Julio’s focussed on celebrating older people. He’s had several exhibitions in Islington showing paintings from the Golden Years series. Julio also paints abstracts fizzing with energy.

Q: Did you start out in Islington?
I was born in Colombia and came to the UK when I was 12. I came to join my father and his wife. I had no English! We went to live in Surrey and the school put me a year back in the last year of primary so I could catch up a little bit. After that they moved me back into my year. We then moved to east London and that wasn’t too great compared to Surrey. When I was in the East End we had a dentist who was on Upper Street – that’s how I got to see Islington and thought it would be a great place to move to. I still go to the same dentist, which was Pickerings and now it’s Smile.

I live on Liverpool Road and been there since 1997. Now I’m thinking quality of life here in Spain where I’ll be for the summer… The London cold is getting to me with a back and shoulder problem. As an artist I can be anywhere. Maybe I’m going to move here eventually? But I’m not going to wait until I retire. That’s 25 years from now.

I’m not alone. Little Bumble is a rescue from Romania. He’s now getting used to the heat. He hates being away from me. Because of his traumas it’s taken a long time, but he’s very comfortable with me, and good company.

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6 places Julio likes in Islington

• London is quite a fast pace, but Islington is a nice area of London and where I have been living for the past twenty even years.
• Me and Bumble my rescued dog from Romania frequent Highbury Fields for his daily walk. I like the church at the top of the path with the memory café on a Monday morning. I wanted to run some art workshops for the elderly, but they’ve got their plans and to do it I need funding for another day. I asked the older adults that frequent it and about 80 per cent said they would come and do some art… I don’t like to go to the same park again and again, so Paradise Park is nice as well and Islington Green, but my favourite place is the stream (New River) that runs in Canonbury but unfortunately it was closed for improvements for a while.
• Gallipoli on 119-120 Upper Street is one of my favourite restaurants and is value for money. I’ll usually get a meze, with a really nice variety of hot and cold dishes.
• Islington Arts Club, 235 Upper Street, is a bar on the corner of Laycock Street. They do a lot of stuff with musicians and artists. I had an exhibition there in 2010. It’s a good place because of how involved with arts they are. In Islington it is difficult to find spaces to show art and there’s a lack of support for local artists.
• My last exhibition, titled The Golden Years, GOLDEN YEARS | (juliocesarts.com)) was in Islington Square, and they were very helpful providing me with an exhibiting space last minute as the planned exhibition at Angel Centre was cancelled last minute. Islington Square has space that they regularly make available to artists to exhibit their work
• Upper Street is forever changing. From the ‘90s with the corner shops now it’s gone to more upmarket shops.  And how much coffee can you have? Though coffee shops and Upper Street can be a good place to socialise. I can’t help saying hello and smiling at people, but since I got my dog, plus the pandemic and going out of the EU, women usually clutch their bags and men think who is this weirdo? I’m not stealing your bag if I’m with a dog!

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Q: How did the Golden Years series start?
Before the pandemic I approached the housing association where I lived to do some workshops as I noticed how isolated elderly people were. I’d been released from prison, and I knew all these elderly people are so lonely and young people could learn so much from them. I thought why can’t we do workshops to get the elderly to come and do some art and build the bridge? Young people can do art as well and get to know them. We did a pilot of two hours a week for eight weeks. That really went well. I was thinking how to expand and then the pandemic hit, and everything came to a stop.

Just before the first lockdown my grandmother in Colombia got really ill. She was 92 and I was very close to going to see her and paying her my last respects. My aunt said, ‘you’ve seen her a few months ago, there’s no point having that memory of her on a bed’, and that hit home. I stayed here and then we had lockdown, if I’d gone I’d have been stuck for 18 months in Colombia.

To grieve and honour my grandmother I started painting a portrait of her standing in front of the stairs I built for her when I was there and titled it, Stairway to Heaven. That was the first one. I thought, ‘I can’t work with the elderly, but I can do some portraits of them’. Elderly people are full of life, they’ve got so much history. The next in the series was Captain Tom and then after that I did one of the Windrush. When I heard the really bad thing about people being deported and how the woman in the painting, Paulette Wilson, got together a million signatures to stop the deportation I felt she deserved a place in my series. In that painting the waves parted was a bit like Moses – Britain said it was so welcoming and then further down the line it was ‘we didn’t get your papers’ and you’re in the gutter.

After that I painted a couple on the bench, which I called To love and to hold. I was taking Bumble for a walk and I saw a couple in Laycock Street holding hands.

Those paintings take six months each. It’s a lot of work. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. Some people have said they look like photographs. If I did it with oils it would take me years to do the layers. I use acrylics as that’s all I could use in prison – each painting is one square metre. I think the bright colours are from my Colombian roots.

The actual Golden Years was one of the runners up for the Visual Artists Association award out of 8,000 entries in December 2023. It’s not bad really, and considering I’m self-taught, no, let’s say a ‘life-taught’ painter, it’s not a bad achievement.

Q: Have you had a lucky moment?
“There’s a quote on my website from Benjamin Zephaniah, it’s a shame he’s passed away. Two days after I left prison he was at the opening of the exhibition run by Koelser Art at the South Bank (Sep-Nov 2014). He chose one of my paintings as the poster image.” This is how Benjamin rated Julio:

“Julio is a cool cat. I became aware of his work when I used one of his paintings as the poster image for an exhibition I was curating on the famous Southbank in London. It was the stand out piece of the exhibition. His work is vibrant, intelligent, relevant, and quirky. I love his work. Welcome to his world.” Benjamin Zephaniah – poet, writer, lyricist & musician

Q: How do you paint?
I tried to get crowdfunding for the trip, I’ve had a challenging 18 months, and I needed a camper van, but I’ve only got £350 so far. I’ve brought 10m of canvas with me. I’m in Andalucia which has a big gypsy community, with a history of flamenco. I want to document them – with photography – and from that eventually paint a couple of the elderly for the series.

I welcomed painting when I was in prison after a month and a half locked up for 23 hours a day. I’d never painted. I always thought I could never paint, but that introduction to the education department was an art class and I got completely lost in it and forgot where I was. I did a little painting of a beach which is where I wanted to be. And after an hour I thought, ‘that’s not bad, I didn’t think I could paint, but I can’. I thought ‘this is what I’m going to be doing here’. I got sentenced to five years and I did two and a half years. I painted, wrote a couple of screen plays and did animation. I did a lot of work.

I completely lose myself in art. When I painted my grandmother I cried, I smiled and had all those memories of her.

She was housebound in Colombia for a while, and I didn’t know. She used to go round the town talking to lots of people and then on the phone she said she hadn’t been out for months. I asked why and she said, ‘because there’s no stairs’. I was cross with my uncles who left her housebound. I got them to build her stairs, but it was a botch job and there were no railings. So, when I was allowed to leave the country, as soon as my licence finished, I bought a ticket and went to see my grandmother and build her stairs. That painting is a photo of her using the steps for the first time.  My art has got to have meaning. A lot of thought goes into it.

Find out more

• Email for commissions info@juliocesarts.com
• Detail from Julio’s series of paintings on his website https://juliocesarts.com and also https://juliocesarts.com/golden-years
• Please support Julio’s creative rediscovery Andalusia trip on https://gofund.me/48e2470a
• @juliocesartist8    https://www.instagram.com/juliocesartist8/

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. thank you to Isobel from Islington Giving for this interview suggestion. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola