Julia Josephine Kwolyk

I am a life-long artist and musician and grew up through many a snowy winter in Boston.  I now live in the sunnier rolling hills of Charlottesville, VA.  In 2007 I obtained a B.A. in Music from Furman University and in 2015 a Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia.  I am a licensed architect and member of the AIA  with 10 years of professional experience in designing high schools, theaters, community centers, day care centers, and home renovations.  I paint landscapes and provide full service interior architecture.  A word about my work:

There are many destructive things in our external and internal worlds that vie for our attention: the digital barrage, tragedy, oppression, injustice, hopelessness, envy, anxiety, disappointment, doubt…and the list continues.  So, I choose to focus my art and design on constructive themes: encouragement, hope, joy, humor, natural beauty, stillness, color harmony, and detail.  Detail is very important to our brains, an essential expression.  When we take time to notice details in the natural world around us, we begin to unlock how majestic and truly wonderful our world is; relationships become visible; perspective becomes attainable, and even the soul is awakened on a deep level; at best we lose ourselves and gain moments of peace, truth.  

I am inspired by the breadth of color in the natural world around us; each color palette is a theatrical performance of characters that do a temporal dance with geographical personalities.  My paintings are observational.  My graphic work is exploration of geometry and color theory.  My drawings are textural and atmospheric.  Each medium offers a different lens with which to observe and communicate.  Creating always teaches me something, often more about human virtue than the subject itself.   I am a perpetual listener and observer.  Complex music likewise exemplifies the richness and beauty of organized composition, a symbiotic system.  I feel the need to clarify that “organized” does not mean “perfect.”  To remain honest and to reflect humanity is to be what we are: imperfect.

I bring these values and awareness into what I do.  As an artist and architectural designer, I believe that in order for a design to qualify for entry into the visible world, it must be holistically beneficial; new doesn’t always qualify; different doesn’t always qualify; these descriptors can be irrelevant at best and harmful at worst if the requirements of the holistic human aren’t addressed.  A thoughtful approach incorporates temporality, compositional complexity, and spirituality as well as our necessary physiological, economic, and environmental realities.  Reader beware: today’s culture privileges the flashy, self-centered, cutting-edge, persuasive, convenient, empirical, and relative, over the lasting, self-less, human-crafted, honest, patient, instinctual, and true.  What little role I can play to champion the counter-cultural values on this big orb hurling through an even bigger expanse, I accept.  These are the values that give life rather than take it.  These are the values that honor who God is.  I seek to create as I was created, and few things bring me greater joy than helping others feel understood.  Great art and architecture can do that.