Julie Houck, an expressive, journalistic painter, is developing a reputation as an artist to watch. Houck has been recently acknowledged for her significant work by the Florence Biennale, the Nomadas del Arte and has been honored as a Signature painter of Plein Air Painters of Hawaii. Her works are increasingly being displayed at important galleries in Hawaii and on the US Mainland, and she has been published in International Artist Magazine.
Houck’s art career began in Boston, where she was a professional photographer for 17 years. “I enjoyed photographing on location—especially people.” Her talent for location photography kept her on the road for much for the year photographing in Europe, Asia and across the US.
In 1995, Houck decided to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a painter. “When I was in college, I loved my art classes the most. I decided to redirect and pursue what I truly loved. My career as a professional photographer taught me about composition and the importance of light. I find these skills come into play and influence my painting.”
Houck studied with contemporary realist painters who based their instruction on the classical principles of directly observing color, light and form relationships in nature. She studied at the Atelier of Classical Realism in San Francisco with David Hardy, the Academy of Fine Art in Seattle with Anthony Ryder and most recently, in France, at the L’Ecole Albert Defois with Ted Seth Jacobs. Houck studied en plein air with Kevin MacPherson, Don Demers and Kim English.
Coupling her photographic skills with her painter’s eye, Houck’s most recent series is a collection of Parisian nightscapes. These slice of life images evoke an urban warmth and capture “the city of light” with vibrant color and dynamic brushwork.
An award winner at the National Paint America Competition, Houck has also been a recipient of the David Warren Memorial Scholarship Grant, a Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts Acquisition Award as well as exhibition prizes for painting.
Houck’s work is part of the permanent collections of the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and the Hawaii State Art Museum. She was one of the featured artists at the commemorative “Artists of Hawaii” exhibit at the Honolulu Academy of Art in 2000 and has been juried into Art Maui seven times. A popular and well-respected instructor Houck also teaches plein air painting on Maui and in France.
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Contact: Julie Houck Studio
(808) 873-0597
Julie@juliehouck.com
Artist Statement
My process is straightforward. I look at what I paint. I work in oils en plein air or in the studio. I try to put the atmosphere and emotion of the place or scene in my pieces. I am most interested in the transmission of light in my paintings. It is not always the literal view. I am highly influenced by my teachers who were mostly classically trained. The early years in the atelier have stayed with me. They taught me about light and form and creating atmosphere. I will always be grateful.
Although I live in Hawaii, I am not a regional painter. I travel to California and the West and to France several times a year. I am attracted to scenes that tell a story about the place. I believe this is a legacy from my career as a professional photographer. On location, my job was to tell the story with imagery. Pictures
told the story, not words. In my work, I aspire to capture that “something else” about a place and to recreate, on canvas, the feeling of “being there.”
