Fields & Forest Painting

Welcome to works from my studio, JuliaRunningStudio. I hope you enjoy what you find! I come from an extended family full of all different types of classical musicians, composers and painters, muralists and weavers, many who also taught the same. Because my father was a college professor, I was allowed to quietly 'audit' college level art courses starting at age twelve and on. In college, I majored in art with an emphasis in painting, but was discouraged by my own insecurities in spite of the quality of the work I was producing. So, I switched fields to psychology which satisfied my intellectual curiosities about what makes people tick, what leads people to thrive as well as the paths to 'the dark side.' I still occasionally painted while raising my daughter and working as a healthcare administrator, first in Phoenix and then San Diego. When we moved into a house with room for a perfect studio, I jumped back into painting with a vengeance. It was like I was possessed! I got up early each morning to paint before work and stayed up crazy late hours painting. Yes, exhausted, but I couldn't wait to get up in the morning or get home from work at night. I finally took the plunge, quit my day job as a executive in health care, and I now paint full-time! But I still stay up crazy late hours painting! Originally I painted nudes and impressionist landscapes with a color pallet that I now call 'subtle, sad, southwestern browns.' My work has evolved to non-representational abstracts with a pallet of vibrant and bold colors, influenced perhaps by California and the ocean. I like to experiment and see where the colors and shapes will take me. And then once in awhile I'm literally called back to paint a landscape or ocean scape. .