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About the Artist |
Julie resides in McLouth, Kansas with her husband, Steve, and their four young children. While she grew up in Naples, Florida, Julie always dreamed of moving to the Midwest which she did in the Spring of 1990. There, she was better able to pursue her career as a Western pencil artist. Eventually, tendonitis made gripping a pencil very painful. In the spring of 2003, Julie found a solution in a church project she created at the request of her priest… a project that would involve the entire congregation in mass.
After some thought, she decided to create a portrait of Jesus using a compilation of parishioner’s thumbprints. This project called “One Body” hangs in St. Patrick’s Parish of Kansas City, Kansas today. |
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Shortly afterward, Julie decided to apply the same
technique to her own western-themed art work. Her first attempt
turned out a fairly decent portrait of a cowboy and his mustache.
It was then that she realized the combination of sepia-toned
pigment ink and fingerprints gave her paintings that “rough and
rugged” essence that defines the character of the Old West. |
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Since then, her fingertip technique not only allows her to create Western art pain-free, it has been gaining popularity ever since she started demonstrating her unusual method in public. Using just her fingertip, Julie “touches” pigment ink onto acid-free foam board panels, creating detailed paintings that are often mistaken for watercolors… until viewed up close. That is when the fingerprint texture gives the painting a completely different set of details than when viewed from afar. This method has drawn crowds of people, reporters and news cameras to her art show display, then has them coming back to watch her progress. |
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Photos courtesy of Paul Nelson Farms
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