Julie Bowland

 Artists Biography 2010

        Julie Bowland grew up in the Midwest where frequent trips to the Chicago Art Institute fed her appetite for the works of Monet and Van Gogh. Nature was as influential as art, providing refuge and inspiration. Born in Florida, she has always been attracted to its lush, watery wooded landscape. She received her BFA, Magna Cum Laude, from Florida State University and continuing with expressionistic plein air paintings, earned an MFA, Magna Cum Laude, from Arizona State University in Tempe.

        In  2002 Bowland moved to Valdosta, Georgia to take the position of Gallery Director and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at Valdosta State University. Currently she continues to direct the VSU Fine Arts Galley as an Associate Professor of Art. Before coming to Valdosta, she lived in North Florida for almost 20 years, teaching Art at Florida State University and Tallahassee Community College, and for almost seven years was the Arts in Public Places Director for the Cultural Resources Commission, the local arts agency for Tallahassee and Leon County where she directed the City Hall and Airport Art Galleries. Previously, Bowland was director of the 621 Gallery, an independent contemporary non-profit art space in Tallahassee.

        She has had numerous one and two-person exhibitions in galleries and museums around the South. In 2005 and 2004 she was awarded First Place, 2-D, in the Best of Spring into Art at the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts in Valdosta and in 2005, First Place, 2-D in the Southern Artists' League Annual Juried Exhibition, also at the Turner Center. In 2004 she won Second Place in Summer Showcase, a juried exhibition at the Cultural Arts Center in Thomasville, Georgia.  In 2005 she was awarded a Merit Award from both the Thomasville Summer Showcase and a Fitzgerald, Georgia juried competition.

        Bowland's work is included in private, public and corporate collections including the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach, the City of Tallahassee Permanent Collection, Barnett Bank in Jacksonville, First South Bank in Tallahassee and Florida Community College at Jacksonville. She is currently represented by Hoffman Porges Gallery in Historic Ybor City in Tampa, Florida and Signature Gallery in Tallahassee.

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