About the Artist
Born in Pueblo, Colorado, Julia Rymer is a multi-media artist and art educator. Her works evoke her emotional experience of the natural world, while investigating her relationship to time, history, nature's cycles, and Jewish practice and heritage.
She holds an MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute, and a BFA in Painting from the University of Denver School of Art & Art History. Her 25-year art career spans numerous solo and group exhibitions and inclusion in many corporate, museum and private collections throughout the United States. As a founding member of the Seed Sister Artist Collective since 2020, her work has been featured in many international group exhibitions in Europe and Asia. Past artist residencies include the Children’s Museum of Denver and Createspace Wales.
Julia has an extensive background in art education from the K-12 to university level and is a faculty member at the Curtis Center for the Arts in Greenwood Village, Colorado, teaching child and adult art classes. An avid language learner, Julia recently earned her B1 Zertifikat in German from the Goethe Institut. She lives in the foothills outside of Denver, Colorado, with her husband and two children.
Artist Statement
My work embraces the flux and flow of life and nature, the cycles of birth and growth, death and decomposition, rebirth and movement through time. They are a record and the result of my struggle and reconciliation between the material and spiritual realms, moving from friction and resistance into fluidity, like Jacob wrestling with the angel, only to emerge the next morning into a transcendent moment. Each piece I create evolves like geological strata, layers building up over time, cultivating structure in the overall composition. I think of my work as research; much as Josef Albers spoke of his work, saying “All my painting is actually study. The longer I do it, the more and more it is endless.”
My creative practice manifests the spiritual and emotional into the physical. Working in painting, drawing and fiber art, my thoughts, feelings and experience become solid, tangible and visceral. They hearken back to the primal urge we humans have to create, to take from our mind and memories and make something real. Analog in a digital world, my marks are the marks of time, my forms and shapes a record of things gone; my colors are fleeting thoughts, my stitches are emotional maps of my life.
By engaging with the natural world through art, I ask if art needs to reflect our digital society, or if it can exist outside of it, in connection with nature. What if art was unapologetically feminine, beautiful and emotional? What if art gave you the same experience as meditation or walking in the woods? What if art was a place to diffuse, rather than jar your senses?
In recent works, references to my Jewish spiritual practices suggest this connection. Jewish holidays, rituals and traditions are often in tandem with the seasons, times of harvest and rain, and even the phases of the moon. Based on the natural world themselves, these ancient practices embody birth and death and decay, growth and transformation, and are a means to building a deeper relationship with nature, time and ourselves.
To exist between the dual realms, bridging the worlds of the spiritual and the physical, we must open up to flux of life, and flow towards the transformation that is possible. My artworks center themselves in the human essence of existence, in our place in nature, as part of it¬ – slow, deliberate, and real.
Exhibitions
Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions
2024 Hidden and Revealed, Academic Commons Gallery, University of Denver, CO
2022 Beyond Dual Realms, Lone Tree Arts Center, Lone Tree, CO
2021 Flux and Flow, O’Sullivan Art Gallery, Regis University, Denver, CO
Recent Work, RA Modern Gallery, Crested Butte, CO
2020 Analog, Kinder-Padon Gallery, Crested Butte Center for the Arts, CO
2018 Ellipses, MLB Designs & Boutique, Kansas City, MO
Celestial: Two Person Exhibition, Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery, Lafayette, CA
2015 Entanglements, Montclair Gallery, Oakland, CA
2014 Two-Person Exhibition, Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery, Lafayette, CA
2010 New Works, Rockridge Library, Oakland, CA
2008 Aggression Dynamic, CORE New Art Space, Denver, CO
2007 Spectra, CORE New Art Space, Denver, CO
2005night paintings, William Havu Gallery, Denver, CO
2004 MFA Thesis Exhibition, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
2002 Canvas, Paper, Board: Julia Rymer and James Thomson, William Havu Gallery, Denver, CO
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 All Colorado Show, Curtis Center for the Arts, Greenwood Village, CO
Gatherings, Seed Sisters Group Exhibition, Dr. Neil’s Garden, Fringe Festival Venue #521, Edinburgh, Scotland
2024 Present Company, SeeSaw Gallery, Englewood, CO
Cultivar, Seed Sisters Group Exhibition, Central Library, Edinburgh, Scotland
2023 Terroir, Seed Sisters Group Exhibition, Salle d’Aquitaine, Monflanquin, France
2022 Works on Paper, RA Modern Gallery, Crested Butte, CO
Germinate, Seed Sisters Group Exhibition, Rude Gallery, Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, Lakewood, CO
Cross-Pollination, Seed Sisters Group Exhibition, Amaro Gallery, Osaka, Japan
2021 Featured Artists of Artwork Network, IMA Building and TOWN Denver, Denver, CO
Gallery Artist Showcase, RA Modern Gallery, Crested Butte, CO
2020 Pink Progression: Collaborations, Arvada Center for the Arts, CO
Featured Artists, Serena & Lily Design Shop, San Francisco, CA
Color Play II, Danville Art Gallery, Danville, CA
2019 Instructor Showcase, Curtis Center for the Arts, Greenwood Village, CO
Abstracts Group Exhibition, Framed Image Gallery, Denver, CO
2018 Chasing 360: Exploring Process with 5 Abstract Artists, Curtis Center for the Arts, Greenwood Village, CO
Winter Group Show, Slate Art + Batch Showroom, San Francisco, CA
Pink Progression, Center for Visual Arts & Denver Public Central Library, Denver, CO
2017 Contemporary Abstraction, curated by Julia Rymer, Room & Board, Denver, CO
Color Play: 5 Bay Area Artists, co-curated by Julia Rymer and Ellen Levine Dodd, Town of Danville Art Gallery, Danville, CA
2016 Dedicated to Community, Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery, Lafayette, CA
Open Studios Group Exhibition, Room & Board, San Francisco, CA
2015 Seeing Red, Town Center Art Gallery, Danville, CA
D2D: Dedicated to Design, Jennifer Permutter Gallery, Lafayette, CA
2014 San Francisco Open Studios, Misho Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Summer Show, Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery, Lafayette, CA
Coalition for Californina Artists Group Exhibition, NH2 Salon, Novato, CA
2013 Water on Paper, Red Delicious Press, Aurora, CO
Aqueous, National Juried Exhibition, Tubac Center for the Arts, Tubac, AZ
2012 Abstracts, Studio 7 Fine Arts, Pleasanton, CA
Mono y Mono, National Juried Exhibition, Gallery at the J, Austin, TX
SciArt, ScienceOnline 2012 Conference, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
2010 Juried Alumni Exhibition, Victoria H. Myren Gallery, School of Art and Art History, University of Denver, CO
What Lies Above, Below and in Between, Linda Ryan Fine Art, Livermore, CA
Paperworks 2010: Juried Art Exhibition, Northwest Art Center, Minot State University, Minot, ND
2009 Collective Nouns, Metro State Faculty Biennial, Center for Visual Arts, Denver, CO
2008 Juried Student/Alumni Exhibition, School of Art & Art History, University of Denver, CO
27th Annual Juried Exhibition, Littleton Historical Museum, Littleton, CO
2007 99 Pieces of Art on the Wall, Very Special Arts Gallery, Denver, CO
Collective Nouns, MSCD Faculty Exhibition, Center for Visual Arts, Denver, CO
2006 METRO Biennial: MSCD Faculty Exhibition, Emanuel Gallery, Metropolitan State University of Denver, CO
Abstraction, CORE New Art Space, Denver, CO
2004 Faculty Exhibition, Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design, Lakewood, CO
Four Person Exhibition, William Havu Gallery, Denver, CO
Exploration/Innovation, Kingsborough Community College Art Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Pratt MFA Exhibition, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York, NY
The Grand Group Show, Corridor Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Colliding: MFA Drawing Exhibition, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY
2003 Recent Works: Pratt MFA Exhibition, Steuben West Gallery, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
2002 Recent Works: Pratt MFA Exhibition, Steuben East Gallery, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
2001 Recent Works 2001, The Salon Studio, Loveland, CO
2000 Journey, Senior BFA Exhibition, University of Denver, CO
Education
M.F.A. 2004 Painting Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, cum laude
B.F.A. 2000 Painting University of Denver, Denver, CO, cum laude
1999 Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing, Institute for American Universities, Aix-en-Provence, France
Awards
2020 Career Development Award, Colorado Creative Industries
Press
Since 2002, my artwork and writings have been featured in numerous local and national publications, including Southern Living, Westword, Trouvé Magazine, Creative Women’s Co Blog, VoyageDenver, Coastal Living, Colorado Parent and Modern in Denver, as well as catalogs for the 2019 and 2020 Pink Progression exhibitions.
Gallery Representation
Serena & Lily,