Julie is a fine artist whose work offers a contemporary take on the wildlife, horses, and rodeo of the modern American West. A self-described “recovering engineer,” she grew up a horse-obsessed child, drawing equines with singular devotion—an early passion that evolved into both formal training in dressage and jumping, and later, into a lifelong artistic pursuit. Her paintings, rendered in a “disrupted realism” style, explore the tension between representation and abstraction. Through this fragmented visual language, she reflects on the fractured state of our social, political, and natural environments, inviting viewers not just to look, but to truly see.

 

Julie’s artistic journey has zigzagged through a range of media and approaches. Initially inspired by wildlife painter Bob Kuhn, her early work featured representational animals in natural settings. Over time, her compositions became increasingly abstract, leading to an extended exploration of scratchboard—a medium she transformed by omitting shadowed areas, creating strikingly fragmented animal forms. A return to color and the influence of Disrupted Realism marked the next evolution in her work, merging abstraction with realism to express both structure and vulnerability.