Julia Townsend grew up surrounded by art: collector parents, trips to MOMA, creative siblings, and art classes.
Studying art history was a natural path, but making art always felt like the only way to avoid wasting time.
She explores contradictions and hypocrisy in open-ended narratives about materialism, love, war, and meaningful
(and meaningless!) words and phrases. Living in different countries allowed her to view cultures and languages from
different perspectives. She intermingles surrealism, cubism, and Middle Eastern design in drawing and painting,
including relief paintings and installations. From murals to sculpture, she invents characters that find themselves
in Rube Goldberg-ian situations. She also makes landscapes of real places, where something strange is often going on.
After many years in Europe and the Middle East, Townsend (b.1965, Sewickley, PA) now lives and works in
Edenton, North Carolina, USA. Four of her paintings hang on the 100th floor of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
Sponsored by Jotun Paints, Townsend also had the opportunity to work plein-air in the Straight of Hormuz during a
paddle trip around the Musandam to raise money for the blind in Oman. She holds a certificate in Tezhip- the
intricate designs that border the calligraphy in the Koran - from the Topkapi Palace. Townsend’s work has been
exhibited at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the SIKKA
Art Fair (Dubai), and XVA Gallery (Dubai). Her exhibitions have been featured in Panorama Magazine (Dubai),
Marie Claire (Turkish Version), and Die Tageszeiting (Berlin). Townsend has won an Artist Support Grant from
the North Carolina Arts Council, a Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, and a tuition scholarship from
the American Association of University Women. Her work is in the collection of Koç University (Istanbul), Diera
Tower Estates (Dubai), Thomas Klein International (Dubai office), and private collections in 11 countries. She holds
an MFA from the University of Delaware, and a BA from Vassar College.
Earlier work at www.juliatownsend.com