Originally from Colorado, United States, Julie has a broad sense of home. On scholarship she attended the School of Visual Arts, New York City and received her BFA with honors in 1999. After having lived six years in New York, Julie moved to Europe where she lived another six years in Rome, Italy and one year in France in order to study firsthand the history of art in its context.
Julie has participated in artists’ residencies at Fundación Valparaiso-Spain, Polli Talu-Estonia, The Anderson Center-Minnesota, USA, The Julia and David White Artists’ Colony-Costa Rica, Jentel-Wyoming, USA, The Vermont Studio Center-Vermont, USA, CAMAC-France, The Åland Archipelago Guest Artist Residence-Finland, Hambidge-Georgia, USA, The Cill Rialaig Project-Ireland and Kemijärvi Artist Residence-Finland. She is a two-time winner of The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, has her portraits in several private collections and has exhibited in various group shows.
Her hobbies include tango/latin dancing and studying foreign languages of which she speaks Italian, French and Spanish.
Her painting, as is her life, is about humanity. She seeks to both understand herself in the context of the community that is human civilization and to constantly redefine her role within it.
Formally, what intrigues Julie the most in her painting are light and color relationships.
In her portrait and figurative work she looks to go beyond a surface representation to create a sense of life in the painting, to make it feel as if the person represented has just taken a breath.
Julie is presently working on Project Merasi which involves painting portraits of musicians from Rajasthan, India. The objective of these works is to honor both the musicians, who are denied basic human dignity as Untouchables in the caste system of India, as well as their musical legacy of 37 generations. The paintings are being donated to raise funds to assist the Merasi in building schools in Rajasthan.
Julie would like to continue in this direction of using painting for humanity in the future.
