Gallery Showcases Artist Julia Bright’s Immersive Still-Lifes, Seascapes and Landscapes
Boulder’s Mary Williams Fine Arts gallery devotes first post-pandemic solo show to recent paintings, including COVID-inspired work, by prolific local artist ~
Boulder, Colo. (Sept. 15, 2021) — Capturing light and shadow, color and shape, mood and movement with oil paint, Boulder artist Julia Bright’s dedication to the craft yields a wide range of work ranging from atmospheric landscapes to mesmerizing still lifes.
From November 11 until December 1, more than two dozen of Bright’s celebrated oil paintings will hang in the Mary Williams Fine Arts gallery in Boulder, one of Colorado’s premier art galleries. It is the gallery’s first solo show since global pandemic shutdowns began in March 2020.
“I’ve been painting for more than two decades. For quite a while, I almost exclusively worked on still lifes. But recently, I began exploring landscapes. And during COVID, I became obsessed with the sea,” said Bright, who most weekdays spends 10 hours or more in front of her easel. “My work has evolved quite a bit since I began, including the still lifes that got me started. I’m grateful to Mary Williams for this opportunity to show some of my recent work to a wide audience in such a wonderful gallery.”
Bright’s work has always fixed focused on representational art. Her goal with every painting is to capture what she sees when she studies morning fog over a bridge or a still life of vegetables and pottery. The aspects of life — the silver within a wave, the shadows between cottonwood branches, the way light produces different shades of red on a single rose petal — is beautiful, Julia noted. She spends her days communicating with the beauty she sees all around and expressing it.
Among all of her work, she finds still lifes the most challenging.
“With a still life, you start from scratch. It takes hours just to arrange the subject, and you have to have a visual concept in mind. It’s a thoughtful, logical process. If the setup is bad, you won’t produce a good painting no matter how good of a painter you are,” Bright said. “How does light move through the picture? How do you want the viewer’s eye to move around the picture? Is color the most important element? Edges? Shapes? Tension?”
November’s solo show follows an exhibit at the Loveland Public Library that spotlighted her vivid, COVID-inspired seascapes.
Bright has exhibited her work at the Oil Painters of America National and Western Regional Juried Shows, The Swiss Art Expo in Zurich, Switzerland, The Littleton Museum of Fine Art Annual Juried Show, Greenhouse Gallery Salon International Annual Juried Show, Richard Schmid Fine Art Auction, Boulder Art Association’s National Juried Shows, where she received the corporate award of excellence two years in a row, and at the Art Students League of Denver’s Art & Soul Juried Show & Auction.
Her work hangs in private collections in the U.S., Canada, Asia and Europe. Bright is an elected member of American Artists Professional League, an associate member of the Oil Painters of America (OPA) and American Impressionist Society, and a member of the Boulder Art Association. Bright is represented by Mary Williams Fine Arts in Boulder, Colorado, and the Singulart Gallery in Paris, France.
