Julie Byrne is a Washington DC artist. She is best known for her colored pencil drawings of hyper realistic plants and flowers.
Julie earned her BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University, and continued her study at the Corcoran School of Art and George Washington University. She has exhibited in local and international exhibitions, most recently at the Delaplaine Arts Center in Frederick Maryland, the Hill Center, Washington DC, and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2024, London England . Her work is included in the District of Columbia Art Bank and the Library of Congress. Washington DC remains a continued source of inspiration and focus for her colored pencil drawings.
JULIEBYRNE
ARTIST STATEMENT
2026
Nature is the focus of my work. It is a world filled with the flowering plants and vegetation, inspired by backyard gardens, and the public spaces of Washington DC.
I initially approach each drawing as a portrait. It has been many years since I first discovered that I enjoyed drawing the details of plants so much, that often the plant did not survive my scrutiny or the time it took for me to make a drawing. And so I began to use photography to capture impressions of my subjects. My photographs became my sketchbook of ideas, colors and the structure for the drawing. It is a combination of the two that forms the decisions I make for each drawing.
Colored pencil is my medium of choice for the majority of my drawings. It offers both the precision I crave and portability when it is needed. For many years it was the easiest medium for me to use when I was traveling more than I was staying at home as I juggled a career of working on board passenger trains with my artwork. Using colored pencils offered a way to stop and start a drawing during those years. Carrying my drawings during those early Amtrak years, so that I could work on them on a layover did not last long. It did however lay the groundwork for the process that I began, in layering colors to create a highly colored opaque surface. Though my drawings lean toward the botanical and are realistic in their depictions, it is the abstraction within each of the subjects that continues to challenge me for the next drawing. And thanks to those countless road trips, I had the delight to be able to visit museums, cities and gardens I could only have imagined.
Today I continue to use colored pencils in most of my drawings, in a body of work that includes other media but remains essentially ‘Paper and Pencil’
Julie Byrne
Show title – “Journal Woman”
Artist Gail Jones
Mosaic with bookworm journal doll
This collection of work in clay, Glass, fiber, and mix-media, expresses movement of going forward with elements of nature and the human soul.
