Julia Bright
(click here to see artwork)

Julia Bright's oil paintings evoke a feeling of beauty, elegance, and the colorful pleasure of life. Deeply rooted in the realist tradition of the "Old Masters", her modern sensibility reveals itself in her use of color, light and subject matter. Julia's belief that paintings should add to the sense of beauty and happiness in our lives, shows in her work.

Working usually from an umber underpainting, Julia paints alla prima, which means "all at once". She works with a concept of chiaroscuro, the high-contrast light-against-dark that is the hallmark of Old Master painting.

Born in Russia Julia has always been mesmerized by works of the "Old Masters". As a little girl, at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and later at the Louvre in Paris, Julia spent hours staring at the works of Rembrandt, Chardin and Ingres. Later, throughout living and working in Western Europe, Julia would spend hours observing the beauty, the movement of light, the balance of composition that made these masterpieces so compelling. She decided then that one day, she would be an artist.

After moving to the US in 1979, Julia adjusted to American life as a high school student by connecting with her newly adopted culture through art - drawing, painting, attending museums and galleries in her new home of Denver, Colorado. She eventually went on to pursue her MBA in marketing, and has had a successful career in marketing management for the past 15 years. At the age of 32, Julia decided to pursue her dream of becoming a fine artist full time. Julia has studied drawing and painting with David Leffel and Joshua Fallik. She has exhibited her work at the 2002/2003 Boulder Art Association's National Juried Shows, where she received the corporate award of excellence two years in a row, at the Art Students League of Denver's Art & Soul Juried Show & Auction, at the Oil Painters of America Regional Juried Show and at various commercial venues in Colorado. Her work hangs in private collections in the US and Europe. Julia is an associate member of the Oil Painters of America (OPA), and a member of the Boulder Art Association.