Julia Buckwalter spent her formative childhood years growing up in Utah and travelling throughout the Southwest, in awe of the region’s sweeping desert landscapes and majestic skies. After living on both coasts and studying the Visual Arts, she came home to establish her artistic craft in Moab. Julia paints with oil on canvas and panel, both en plein air and large-scale from photograph in the studio, focusing primarily on the dynamics of clouds in her skyscapes and the richness variations of color in her landscapes. Her paintings begin with the activation of a mental blending brush. “Moab’s landscape in particular provides endless inspiration via the intense variation of colors found in nature. A palette evolves in my mind, and I begin to feel the brushstrokes I will use forming as muscle memory. I am often inspired by time spent watching clouds. As a child I’d watch storms roll in across the horizon while playing in the Ghost Ranch landscape of Georgia O’Keeffe. I am deeply inspired and affected by Maynard Dixon, and Edgar Payne, the Post-Impressionist palette and brushwork of Cezanne and Gaugain, and the cinematography of classic western films. My paintings are expressions of passion for the desert landscape's rich palette, her naturally described shapes and linear patterns, and the accompanying language of water, sky, and clouds... Combined, they awaken all of the senses.”