Julia Rue 

Julia Rue is a Korean-American “part-time painter and full-time creator” born in 1996. She earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but left the corporate world to have a more natural lifestyle in the forest of Puerto Rico. Rue mainly works with acrylic paint and ink although she has won notable press for works of various mediums including a series of painted murals that was interviewed by the Boston Globe, MIT Technology Review, and international news. Her work is easily identifiable by bold brushstrokes, natural subject matter, and intentional points of messiness such as smears and splatters. Rue wrestles the dynamism and perfect imperfection found in both nature and the human mind into her canvases with strong nods to expressionism, new ink Asian artists, and the values of contemplative spiritual meditation. Her paintings have been commissioned by Google and public buildings internationally and she has been invited to speak at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA) in Paris on the theme of technology and art.

 

Quote from the artist: "We get stuck in our heads and miss out on so much life. Sometimes, there are little bits of life that are shiny enough to pierce through my selfishly closed eyelids and give me a taste of actually noticing life. My work is me trying to grab those shiny pieces by its two horns, wrestle it onto a stupid piece of canvas, and calling out to the viewers saying ‘Look, look, but have you seen… life?’ " - Julia Rue