Julia and Bob Christian’s gallery on Taylor Road is a feast for the eyes. Open to the general public a few days a week, the second-ground parlor of their brick rowhouse lights up like a jewel in the morning sunlight, and almost everywhere I search are intricately adorned surfaces…tables, chairs, urns, slash-out figures, planters, baskets, photograph frames, the walls by themselves, and, of class, the several, a lot of paintings.
I am right here to fulfill the relatively reticent Julia Christian about her artwork, but I before long understand that a person cannot definitely talk about Julia’s work with no talking about her spouse Bob’s. Following a lot more than forty yrs, their artwork careers and designs are inextricably bound collectively.

 
 “Red Pepper and Blue Figure,” oil on board
We commence at the beginning. Was Julia generally artistic? “Yes,” she responds, “You know when you are a younger boy or girl.” The daughter of an architect, her earliest recollections in Albany, Ga are of painting Joan Walsh Anglund coloring textbooks her mom would obtain her. When I talk to about her time earning a BFA in Painting and Drawing at The Univ. of Ga, she laughs and says, “I was just contemplating about that this early morning. When I believe of UGA, I feel about the B-52’s. I had the extremely initially social gathering where by they played. Fred desired to have a dance bash.”
What a assert to fame! She refers to Fred Schneider and the legendary Athens new wave band shaped in 1976, at present on their farewell tour. “The very last end is Athens. We’ve acquired to go.”
Husband Bob, also from Albany, attended the Atlanta College of Artwork, and the pair moved to New York Metropolis in which Julia says, “I worked for an ‘art manufacturing facility.’ The proprietor had a six-shop manufacturing unit the place they created frames on just one ground and I oversaw manufacturing abstract paintings, mostly for the inside style and design sector. We had a ball carrying out it.” She goes on, “When Bob and I at last obtained married, we came to Savannah and stayed downtown in the Hyatt. Obtained off the elevator, and lo and behold, there’s a person of my paintings. It was the funniest detail.”
Even though Julia was mass manufacturing daring abstracts (which even now occasionally occur to auction), Bob was education less than the attractive painter and antiques seller John Rosselli on 72nd Street. In 1982, he relocated his individual attractive arts small business to Savannah in which he and Julia went on to elevate 3 sons. It is unspoken, but Julia need to have borne the brunt of the increasing as Bob’s assignments take him all over the state for 7 to 10 days at a time, although she runs the enterprise aspect of factors, and results in and demonstrates her very own work.

 
 “Savannah Residing Room,” pen and ink
While there are many of Julia’s parts in the key gallery, we will have to stroll exterior to the ground ground level to see the lion’s share of her output. The road stage gallery is stuffed to overflowing with her impeccably framed pencil determine scientific studies from models (“We employed to have a figure drawing group that met at the Jepson”), painted portraits, her time-consuming pen and ink and coloured pencil nevertheless lifes, and vibrant oil paintings of dogs and individuals portrayed in her uniquely volumetric, and frequently humorous design and style. Curiously, she however shows numerous free abstract pieces and at minimum 1 determine drawing established throughout her time at UGA.
Julia is at the moment represented by a gallery in Dallas and by the proficient Carmen Aguirre, director of the Gallery at the Mansion, who has built it her mission to highlight the perform of Savannah artists. Of class, Julia makes revenue by way of foot targeted traffic to the gallery and by means of her website, but states, “We generally get the job done with inside designers.” It seems that above the a long time they have discovered out about Bob’s function by Julia and identified out about Julia’s operate through Bob’s. As I explained, their professions are inextricably intertwined…Even their designs look interwoven. In Julia’s paintings

 
 Interior of Bob Christian Decorative Artwork
, planes are flattened in a Post Impressionistic manner and there is typically a stylized and decorative element. For example, I appear at a new nonetheless life of superbly rendered loaves of bread sitting on a material that she subsequently embellished with a abundant russet floral layout. When I check with her about similarities to Bob’s decorative get the job done, she claims, “Well, you’d practically count on that after forty years. He’s my finest affect.”
In a natural way introverted, humble, and deeply private, Julia seems to feel that good art calls for no dialogue. She suggests she likes to paint figures and appears to very easily pull compositions from her imagination, “putting together paintings that ideally people today will delight in.”
She does, nevertheless, point out that her most up-to-date painting – a nevertheless lifestyle of a ham – was affected by her love for Gauguin’s 1889 “The Ham” which hangs in the Phillips Selection in DC. She is thrilled to see the Alex Katz Retrospective at the Guggenheim this month and the “Edward Hopper’s New York” clearly show at the Whitney Museum of American Artwork.
Constantly resourceful, normally manufacturing perform, Julia has a cluttered drafting desk in the again of her downstairs gallery the place she attracts two times a 7 days. “And I paint upstairs 4 times a week.” We go to the top ground of the house to acquire a glance – a vivid, perfectly-lit space includes numerous is effective in progress, her new ham still life, her various tubes of oil paints and her massive easel, which now holds the commencing sketches of her up coming painting.
Back again in the primary gallery, we sit at a fake marquetry round desk in the gallery and flip assumed the massive binders of magazine content from such publications as Veranda Journal, Elle Decor and Architectural Digest. They function Bob’s get the job done with the country’s top inside designers – commissioned murals, floors, ceilings, home furniture, and canvases – all showcasing what Julia refers to as his “innate perception and depth of design.”
She is especially very pleased that a single of his murals is featured on the protect of At Dwelling in the South: Interior Design and style Reimagined, the just lately posted, and first, hardcover reserve by Veranda Journal.
Julia claims, “We just work all the time. Just about anything with paint, we have accomplished!” As an creative pair, they are as one, even though, of course, every partner’s will work stand on their own merit…
Just after UGA Julia continued her reports at The Arts College students League of New York, The Countrywide Academy School of Fantastic Arts, and The Pennsylvania Academy of Wonderful Arts. She is a member of Allied Artists of American, Inc., Nationwide Affiliation of Ladies Artists, Inc., and Women’s Caucus for Artwork of Ga, and her function has been featured in many countrywide publications.
Her inventive output is prodigious, and the caliber of her portray is actually museum worthy.
When I ask about the foreseeable future, Julia states, “You really do not retire when you are passionate about what you do. You just do it for as extended as you can.”
Julia Christian: A girl of excellent artistic potential deserving of our focus.
Come across out much more at Juliachristianart.com and adhere to her on Instagram.com/juliachristianart. See her get the job done at the Gallery at the Mansion, 700 Drayton Avenue, and at Bob Christian Attractive Art and Julia Christian Gallery, 114 W. Taylor Avenue, open up on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
