I like to work with any subject, though most of my art involves figures, portraits, and still life. I like pastels because of their vibrant colours and the variety of strokes that can be made. I experiment a lot with colour and mark making. Other mediums I work with are graphite, charcoal, ink, scratchboard, coloured pencil, and acrylic and oil paints. I pretty much try out anything that seems interesting to me. I find that working with various mediums enhances my art overall since I can translate what I learn in one medium to another. However, pastel remains my favourite medium.
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Red Wall

​Julia was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, by parents who were amateur painters and ardent museum goers. Visiting the Cleveland Museum of Art was a favorite pastime, and Julia spent many hours sketching in the galleries as a child and docenting there as a teenager.
Curiosity to understand the processes that formed the earth' surface lead Julia to the study of geology, and she earned a BA from Bryn Mawr College in 1967 and a PhD in geology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1975 before getting a job as a hydrologist with the United States Geological Survey.  In Illinois, and later in Arizona, she worked along rivers, observing the flow and sediment movement.

Julia has had a love of the west since visiting as a child with her family, so when she had the opportunity to move to Arizona and work on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, she and her husband jumped at the chance to move to Tucson. She spent 15 years collecting data on sediment transport and river flow in the Grand Canyon.  During that time, she made extensive use of vertical aerial photographs in her work, and this view of the river from above has given her a unique perspective that is evident in her paintings, many of which are inspired by the Colorado River.

Julia has taken classes in drawing, painting and color theory at the Tucson Museum of Art School and Pima Community College and has studied with Tucson artist Deanna Thibault.  She joined the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild in 1997 and became a signature member in 2009.  In 1999, she retired from her job as a scientist to devote more time to her art.  Workshops with national watercolor artists, including Diane Maxey, Ted Nuttall, Don Getz, Don Andrews, and Timothy Clark all helped develop her skills and personal expression as a painter.  Independent study with the internationally acclaimed artist Katherine Chang Liu has provided further artistic development.
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Julia loves landscapes and usually paints them without any man-made features.  Although her landscapes, frequently shown in aerial view, reflect her experience as a geologist/hydrologist, they depict a sense of place and time rather than any actual place.
Julia began using pastels while leading an art group at the Aphasia Center of Tucson.  After experimenting with various mediums, Julia found pastels were the best for short sessions with students who had the physical and/or cognitive impairments from brain injuries. These sessions, and a sister who is a pastel artist, inspired her to continue exploring the medium.  She began playing with smart phone and tablet apps for creating art at the same time and using them as planning tools in her own work as well as an alternative medium for the aphasia students. 

Bridal Wreath Falls

Self Portrait

​A native of Montana, I have lived and worked as an architect in Tucson, Arizona for the last 36 years. Most of my immediate family has moved to Tucson as well, so after 36 years of living and working in the desert, my home is in “Montazona”.
 
 
Music has always been a part of my life as well, and I have found that need happily satisfied in Tucson by playing my guitar, and singing with the Sons Of Orpheus, the Male Choir Of Tucson. The choir has taken several tours over the years and I have had the pleasure of singing a mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City and performing at the Notre Dame Cathedral in
Paris. We are applying to sing an Evensong in Westminster Abbey in London in 2020. We have several concerts throughout the year, highlighted by the annual Christmas Performances with the Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus at Tucson’s historic mission church, San Xavier Del Bac.
 
 
Designing buildings requires lots of creativity, while restrained by budgets, schedule, building regulations, agency reviews, and neighborhood reviews, among other challenges. Upon retirement 5 years ago, I was anxious to retain a creative outlet without all of the boundaries. The diversity of the landscape of the West and my love of this magnificent environment has driven my desire to share my view of this land with others through pastel paintings, and lately, oil paintings.
 
 
I paint landscapes that are familiar to me, attempting to capture the impressions I am left with from frequent hikes I have taken throughout my life in my home state of Montana and my adopted state of Arizona. I select

views of landscapes that capture sun, shadow, and changing weather conditions that interest me, allowing the ever dominant and changing sky to play a featured role in my paintings. I often place distant figures in my paintings, not only leaving the viewer an intriguing storyline to consider, but also providing a more familiar human scale to the vastness of our western landscapes.The power of nature is ever present in the quiet and the solitude of my walks and inspires me to share my emotional connections to these special places through my paintings.
 
 
The Tucson Pastel Society has been a great place to advance my education in the art of painting and has been a source of many new friendships. When we were given our building a couple of years ago, I was “conscripted” into chairing the Building Committee and am re-living the challenge of finding creative resolutions to “surprises” of what an aged and neglected building brings, but once again, restricted by the “boundaries” of budget and regulations. Just like painting, when you are in the middle of working
through the challenges, I would like to toss the whole thing, but perseverance and keeping the faith, the finished result can be very rewarding. There is still work to do. I think I’ll go paint.

At the age of three I was drawing as a way to have my own identity within a family of 4 sisters. I went to Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California for an AA degree but no further as I was married and a son soon followed. Divorced after 6 years I became a single parent supporting myself and son with very little time to devote to art. I did some oil painting from time to time and took some courses from Art Center School of Design in Pasadena and adult education art classes.

In 2003 I retired and moved to Oregon from California to find a vibrant art community in the town in which I chose to reside. My art has shown in Crossroads Carnegie Art Center, Short Term Galley and the Dancing Elephant Gallery in Baker City, Oregon as well as The Blue Turtle Gallery and Arts East Gallery in La Grande, Oregon.

I have enjoyed the Santa Rita Art League here in Green Valley and am responsible for Figure Drawing sessions and the Plein Air Group but also participate in the Portrait at Santa Rita Art League. I joined the Clay Studio and work a bit in clay as well. It has opened the door to wonderful artists and
has allowed me the freedom to do more. I have shown at Posada Java , Lavender Restaurant as well as Green Valley Recreation Centers.

As of 2016 I have ventured out into teaching at Quail Creek and privately. I joined The Tuscon Pastel Society in 2014 and split my time between both art groups as the pastel medium is my favorite.
First Place at Crossroads Art Center Open Show for 2 dimensional category 2015
Honorable Mention at Members Juried Show, Santa Rita Art League 2017
First Place winner at the Summer Open Juried Show for Santa Rita Art League 2018
​Honorable Mention Community Performing Arts Center “Southwest Show” 2018

I believe my style is more like Impressionist than anything else though I never really decided intentionally to work in any specific "style".  It just kind of developed out of my interest in the work of Cezanne, Renoir and Monet among others.  My media is mostly pastel though I love mixed media too using pencil, pen & ink, watercolor and pastel.  I paint landscapes because I love nature and want to show others the beauty of our desert lands and skies.  I paint still-life choosing objects that work together to tell a story or convey an idea of what the person those objects belong to must be like.
  
I was born an army brat.  With my mother, brother and sister we followed my father around the world from Army Base to Army Base.  Never really belonging anywhere I didn't try to make many friends so drawing was how I entertained myself.  When I was young drawing horses was one of my favorite pass times.  Because we traveled a lot I can honestly say that nature has always fascinated me.  I've never been anywhere that I couldn't find something to love about it. 

I married young and raised two daughters in Austin, TX working first in data entry and later as a bookkeeper and administrative assistant.  Once the girls were out on their own and I was no longer married I spent some years following another passion of mine as a Psychic and Tarot Reader.  I lived in an RV and followed the fair circuit around the western US doing Psychic Fairs and Renaissance Festivals, where I picked up a talent in belly dancing as well as being the Gypsy Fortune teller.  I traveled north in the summer and come back south in the winter.  Each time I came through Arizona I stopped at a camp ground in southern Tucson and fell in love with the sunsets and sunrises and the beauties of the desert all over again so that after a few years when I came back to Tucson and saw the sunsets I felt like I was home.
 
​So when one of my daughters called to tell me she had a job in Tucson and wanted me to come help her settle in I dropped everything and settled in here myself.  Long story short, my daughter is back in Austin but I'm still here in Tucson.

I started drawing as a child.  My favorite subject in school was Art but life got in the way.  Now I have the time and so I create my artwork because I want to.  It quiets my mind like transcendental meditation and lets me enter a world of my own.

Some of my other interests are drumming with local groups like the Desert Crones and playing the Didjorie Doo which is an Australian Aborigine type horn made of a hollowed out log, though all of mine are made of agave.
Now as a member of the Tucson Pastel Society I am becoming more involved in the local art scene and loving it.  I plan to spend the rest of my life recording the beauty and adventure of the world around me as an Artist.
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Rincon Mountain Skyhole
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I am interested in the ongoing and evolving relationship plants have with people and how to portray their fascinating appearances in a vase, in a garden, or in the wild.  I come from gardening stock. Both my grandmother and my mother loved to garden and they inspired my interest in plants. They also nurtured my enthusiasm for art.
 
 I know that domestic plants and their wild relatives make life on earth possible and for me they are worthy subjects for artistic expression. Plants provide us with food, clothing, medication and shelter and I like painting them for their bold or delicate structures and their rainbow colors as well as the remarkable places they inhabit.
 
My botanical illustration background taught me to slow down and take a long look in order to record what I saw. The practice of drawing to know the plants in my garden became a passion and a lifelong pursuit. It brings me endless hours of satisfaction and informs all of my artistic choices from botanical illustration to painting in pastels.
 
Pastels are a hands-on medium and the perfect choice for any artist who likes to dig in the dirt. They are both messy and gratifying much like gardening and I find they are a gritty colorful way to paint my own connection to plants.
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