Autumn Avenue by Juli Kirk, oil on canvas, 20 x 20 inches
Juli Kirk is a classically-trained artist who prefers to work from her imagination. The results to me are both Impressionistic and Expressionistic—the former where the play of changing light on realistic shapes and visible brush strokes stimulate the viewer’s imagination, and the latter where moods and feelings are evoked.
Kirk lives and paints in Easthampton, Massachusetts and Warrenton, Virginia. She is a cum laude graduate of Boston University’s School for the Arts and has also studied art at Queens College (NY), New York Studio School, Cabrillo College (CA), and the University of Santa Cruz (CA).
Juli continued to paint daily while raising three children, riding for a sale barn, running a boarding stable where she gave riding lessons, and training horses on a freelance basis. She was taught to ride by her mother, who was a show rider competing in her youth at the top shows, including Madison Square Garden. Juli got into racing on the fair circuit in western Massachusetts and eventually traveled to Virginia to work with a cousin, Sharon Maloney, who broke racehorses. During that time, a broncy horse at the sale barn bucked her off. The fall resulted in severe back problems.
One day Cousin Sharon asked, “Would you paint my dog?” Juli did so, and as more commissions developed she was able to give up her riding career. In fact, that first year she delivered fifty-two dog portraits!
“As a painter, I find myself trying to walk the line between the beauty of reality and the beauty of invention,” Juli says. “I want it all—the sensuousness and mystery of paint, color, and shape for their own sake and the same sensuousness and mystery that takes place as candlelight falls over the human form or the grace and elegance of a horse at full gallop. I want to take all this and still suggest ambiguous stories, dreams, or emotions that can be interpreted personally by the viewer.”
Juli’s paintings were included in the MFHA Centennial Art Tour in 2007. Her work is sold through Greg Ladd’s Cross Gate Gallery in Lexington, Kentucky; Elizabeth Beer’s Beresford Gallery in Unionville, Pennsylvania; Berkley Gallery in Warrenton, Virginia; and others. She has recently completed a couple of foxhunting paintings, including one commissioned for the Radnor Hunt’s centennial celebration.
Click to see more of Juli Kirk’s paintings and pricing information.
Posted March 19, 2013
