Once seen, Julie Verhoeven is never forgotten. She’s a cacophony of colour, print and texture. She shaves off her eyebrows and artfully draws in thin, beautiful lines instead. She laughs a lot and it’s a lovely tinkling sound.

At the time of our interview, her hair is hovering just above shoulder level in a blunt, step-shaped, tri-tone do. It won’t stay that way for long, though – roughly every six weeks she changes it. It’s an apt reflection of her approach to her art, ‘I get bored or tired of my own work and then I want to change it or re-address it’. It’s this restlessness that has driven her art to evolve from ‘girly-eyed drawings’ to ‘shouty but happy and angry’ videos, as she terms them.

While the format and presentation of her work has moved on considerably, its focus has a remained a constant. She explains, laughing (tinkling), ‘Whatever I tend to do they all [her pieces] seem to have the same message of sorts.’ They’re about 'celebrating woman, but also with a bit of anger again. It’s trying to be attractive.’

The subject of attractiveness is something that comes up a lot with Verhoeven. That’s because often her inspiration comes from beauty. ‘I’m attracted to beauty, conventional beauty – well not always conventional beauty! – but that’s what I like to draw. That’s what I am fascinated by. And because I was born looking not beautiful, also it’s that thing of how beautiful people cope with aging.’

‘Not beautiful’, ‘boring’, ‘naive’, ‘mannish’, ‘crap’... These are the kinds of words that crop up regularly when talking with Verhoeven. She is genuinely and charmingly self-deprecating, which is surprising given the impressive scope of her career to date. Her first job was working under fashion design legend John Galliano – not too shabby!  

In the two decades that have been and gone since then, Verhoeven has amassed more impressive names in her portfolio, including Louis Vuitton, Dazed and Confused, Mulberry, Versace and MAC to name just a few. She’s participated in a remarkable 69 exhibitions, 22 of them solo. She landed a teaching position at the prestigious Central Saint Martins, ironically the college (and on the course) that incidentally rejected her student application. Twice.

She counts that rejection as the first of two ‘pivotal’ moments in her career. ‘That was actually a blessing in disguise… because I hadn’t got a college place it meant through default that I stayed there [at John Galliano’s studio] and trained up on the job. That had a huge impact on my work going forward.’ The second key event occurred in 2004, when she was fired from her role as Chief Designer at Gibo, a luxury Italian fashion label. On reflection this ‘was again a blessing that made me re-address everything. And then I decided – and it’s been a slow, long road – that I wanted to become an artist. From that point I’ve tried to move gingerly in that direction. And now it’s clear what I am going to do now for the rest of my days.’

Right now those days are filled with editing videos. ‘Video: I really love it. It seems that everything I am doing at the moment is moving towards video.’ That includes her latest piece of work, which is to be exhibited in Zurich as part of the Sacre 101 exhibition based on the rites of spring. ‘I was commissioned to do something relating to the costume. It’s called 'Sweating Greens'. It has quite a lot of vegetables in it. And lots of silly props.’

When that project finishes, there’s excited talk of shooting full figures (up until now she’s only shot above waist level) and ‘doing the green screen thing and using my drawings.’ Her tinklings becomes even more frequent - it’s clear that she’s thrilled by the prospect. ‘Colour, cloth, texture, print. You know, it really excites me. I feel very sad if I am not surrounded by it.’

And surrounded by it she is. It’s stacked on desks, spilling out of bags and propped against walls in her studio. It’s loitering on stairs, peeking from drawers and hanging from light fittings. By her own logic then, she must be ecstatic? ‘It’s taken me a while to get to this point. I suppose now I’m more confident with where I am at in life. I have been a little more subtle in the past. Now I care less about how I am perceived, so I have fun with it. And it does make me happy.’

We’re not surprised. After being in Verhoeven’s world for just a few moments we felt happy too.