Julie T. Chapman

I am an Ohio farm girl and recovering engineer who came to Montana to be an artist following 18 years working for HP in California, after I won the Arts for the Parks $50,000 Grand Prize in 2002.

I grew up as a horse-obsessed child who drew equines monomaniacally out of unrequited love (I’ve since trained in dressage, jumping, and reining). My imagery is a contemporary take on the wildlife, horses, and rodeo of the modern American west, in a “disrupted realism” style.

These paintings are a response to the fragmented nature of our current environment (social, political, and natural), and they are intended to spur us to ask questions of ourselves and our society. These pieces demand more from me than any other body of work I’ve done before…but I want them to be evocative, and just as the paintings require my intense focus, I ask a lot from my viewers: I ask them to participate in not just looking, but seeing.