This series begins with a fire - a house fire. The hand made home where Julie Oakes, her husband and their two children had lived for fourteen years - beyond the electrical lines, with candles for light and wood for heat - burnt to the ground on January 10, 1996.

Julie and the children went to Thailand and Bali, -a planned vacation that the rallying support of their community helped them to pull from the ashes. Traumatized by the loss, they discovered a Balinese spiritual practice that Julie brought back with her and from this initiated the works that constitute “Home Offerings.”

In Bali, each morning, the house is blessed with an offering of fruit which is placed on a small shrine in front of, or within, the home. In the house that had burned down there had been a painting that Oakes had done when Greta was a baby. The painting was large and depicted the garden through the changes of three seasons. On the fence hung the baby clothes.

The first painting in this seires, titled “Home Offerings,” replaced this original ‘in the Oakes’ new home. Each of the pieces within the series is a thanksgiving and celebration of domestic offerings. Balinese artifacts are often present. Gradually the paintings changed and the subject matter came home - the fruits were Canadian, apples, pears, plums, and the objects from a Western culture.

Julie Oakes