Julia Purinton spent her childhood in Virginia and Pennsylvania, graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Fine Arts, pursued a course of study at the School of Fine Arts in New York City, and settled in New England, first on Boston's North Shore, then in the Mad River Valley of Vermont. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a princess. Spending hours pouring over lush fairy tale illustrations at my grandmother's house, I internalized a vision of the landscape inseparable from the drama of life. Climbing trees and running through the woods & fields of Pennsylvania and Virginia, I imagined trolls and unicorns around every bend, visualizing the settings of my favorite myths and novels. As an artist, I am immersed in the distillation of landscape with narrative rather than purely descriptive intent. utilizing a familiar vernacular of landscape imagery, I explore psychological passage and growth; finding joy, accepting loss, releasing regret. In the way that fairy tales dramatize elements of real life, my paintings illuminate aspects of personal endeavor. When the viewer is drawn to an image throughout the recognition of an emotion rather than of a specific site, there is the rewarding sensation of having shared both the mystery and the commonality of human experience.
