Julia Whitney Barnes

Picturesque Botany (Still Life Painting of Flowers on Blue in Victorian Frame)

2023

Born in Newbury, Julia Whitney Barnes spent two decades in Brooklyn, before moving to the Hudson Valley, where she now lives with her photographer husband and two children. Barnes is a multidisciplinary artist whose work combines elements from the human or built environment in surreal juxtapositions with nature. Her boldly colored paintings are based on a variety of source images that are conjoined into unusual interiors and landscapes. Whitney Barnes works in the style of many Hudson River School artists who created composite paintings based on sketches from several days and locations distilled into a single image. Julia Whitney Barnes received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and MFA from Hunter College, both in New York. Whitney Barnes has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad and her work has been featured in The New York Times, Chronogram Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, The Village Voice, Hyperallergic and The New York Sun. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Abbey Memorial Trust Fund for Mural Painting, National Academy of Fine Arts, the Gowanus Public Art Initiative and completed public art projects in Fjellerup, Denmark through funding from Kulturpuljen, Norddjurs Kommune, Denmark in 2013 and the NYC DOT Urban Art program in 2011.