I think that for me the paintings grew out of the drawing in the beginning. My initial impulse and investigation was to try and develop, through drawing, a language that could communicate different types of narratives and build a cityscape, each mark having a character, a modus operandi of social behavior.
Julie Mehretu quoted in: David Binkley and Kinsey Katchka, “Ethiopian Passages: Dialogues in the Diaspora”, Smithsonian Museum of African Art, 2003