BayouArtist: Julie Crews

EVEN AT A YOUNG AGE, JULIE CREWS WAS DRAWN TO THE CONTROL AND INDEPENDENCE SHE FOUND IN ART. NOW, AS A WIFE AND MOTHER OF FIVE, JULIE HAS TO BALANCE THE PUSH AND PULL OF HER WORK BETWEEN BEING AN ARTIST AND HER FAMILY LIFE.

By April Clark HonakerPhotographs  | by Kelly Moore Clark

As a mother of five, artist Julie Crews must juggle a lot of balls to keep up with everyone and still make time for her art. “In the past, when I saw myself as an aspiring professional, I felt I needed to do my maternal duties before I could paint,” she said. Now that she’s experiencing recognition and her work is being exhibited, she literally has deadlines and other professional pressures that give her a reason to tuck herself away in the studio.

Although there’s a constant push and pull when it comes to spending time with her family versus spending time painting, she tries not to feel guilty. In fact, she laughs at the irony of hiring a nanny, so she can paint children’s toys and other tokens of childhood as her own children grow up outside the studio door. “There are so many things in this world people feel the need to feel guilty about,” she said. “I try to only feel guilty about things I should really feel guilty about—like Netflix binging and ten-commandment stuff.”

Still, if her children need her, Julie is there. “I’m glad I don’t struggle with being a workaholic,” she said. “I can put the brush down.” There is definitely an ebb and flow to her life and to her artistic process. There are times when painting comes first and times when parenting comes first, but this back and forth makes Julie a better parent. “If I don’t take that time in the studio, I become a flatline,” she said. “It’s therapy, and I don’t do very well when I don’t paint.” Everyone is happier, and Julie is more interesting when she gets time to do what she loves. “Life’s too short not to do what you love,” she said. At the same time, any artist has to work through and balance things outside the studio to embrace that love.

While being a mom and an artist has certainly come with a unique set of challenges, Julie says, “I’ve always taken myself seriously enough to make time and space constraints work.” There have been times when she’s had to climb over the bed to get to her easel and other times when all four of her oldest children slept in the same room, so she could have space to paint. But after several years of working within these constraints, Julie felt she deserved a studio. Her husband Niel agreed, and when they built their own house four years ago, they made sure the design included a devoted room for her painting.

Now, even with a devoted studio space and a child lock, Julie’s creative world and her domestic world inevitably overlap, sometimes in fortuitous ways, sometimes in planned ways, and sometimes in disheartening ways. On more than one occasion, Julie’s youngest child Ruby has crept into the studio and taken a brush to one of the works in progress. According to Julie, getting angry in these moments isn’t an option, and the only acceptable option is to laugh or cry. In the latest incident, Ruby almost completely obscured a nearly finished portrait of her brother Simon. In that moment, Julie could have given up, but instead she chose to persevere and salvage the painting. She chose to laugh and keep going.

On her most productive days, Julie gets up at 4 a.m. and paints until the kids wake up. This quiet time, when it’s just her and the painting, becomes a kind of escape. “It’s about the only place where I like to fool myself into thinking I have control,” she said. Of course, there is some level of control in the studio, but never total control. Along with control, there’s also an element of freedom and individuality. “There’s an independence that doesn’t exist anywhere else,” she said.

Even before Julie became a wife and mother, she was drawn to the control and independence she found in art. At age 7, she won her first art-related award, a coloring contest sponsored by the local Hallmark store. As a prize, she received a giant plush pumpkin, and in that moment, she realized that art was something she could work hard at and be rewarded for, even as a kid. According to Julie, when children have a natural aptitude for something and get a bit of commendation and encouragement, they’re more likely to continue on that path. Julie certainly did. She was able to participate in her high school’s talented art program, which led to multiple artistic opportunities, including a visit to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, which was the first big museum she’d ever visited and a true treat.

The talented art program also prepared Julie to apply to The Governor’s School at Fresno State University. Upon acceptance, Julie continued to grow her skills and knowledge during a month-long, intensive summer art program for high school students. During high school, Julie also earned her first paid, arts-related job as an editorial cartoonist for the teen insert of a local newspaper, and she sold a piece in an art show at the local mall. She even seized an opportunity to have her artwork printed on a playbill for a local production of Dracula. “It’s fun to think back,” she said. “Any time I had a chance to put myself out there, I did. There were points when I was more naive than others, but I always had a mindset of making art a primary focus.”

By the time she graduated from high school, Julie had seen that making art was not only fulfilling on a personal level; it could also sustain itself and maybe even provide a sustainable income. After high school, pursuing art in college was a natural choice. At Brigham Young University in Utah, Julie earned an Associate of Arts in Illustration. Although she learned a lot about design and storytelling and doesn’t regret earning a degree in illustration, she discovered there were a lot of hurdles to success in illustration and that the path to success required working under someone else’s constant direction. As a result, she soon discovered she was happier expressing herself with a paint brush under her own direction.

Despite the fact that Julie has spent most of her life pursuing art, she feels she’s just now getting past the emerging artist stage. According to Julie, the story of any successful artist is one of perseverance, and the greatest lesson she’s learned along the way is to never give up. “Ira Glass does a great job of explaining how I feel,” she said. “He says there’s a gap between where you are and where you want to be, and the only way to bridge that gap is to keep making work.” Even eight years ago, Julie said she was still essentially self-taught. She was painting to explore and understand color relationships in oils, but now that she has a firmer grasp of her medium and how it behaves, she has begun to think of her work more conceptually and has started to create bodies of work.

Although she could have fun with other media, Julie is firmly committed to oil paint. “I could spend the rest of my life painting with oils and still learn something new,” she said. “I feel like a lifelong devotion to oil paint will not let me down. There are so many ways to approach it—loose or tight—and I’m constantly battling with how I approach it.”

Improvement inevitably involves practice and a bit of struggle, but Julie hopes her work is never overwrought. “We should strive to improve. That’s our inherent desire—to excel,” Julie said, “but there is no such thing as perfection. I once thought I could get an ‘A’ in everything, but once I could let go of that false notion, everything became more ‘okay.’” Julie believes that if we accept imperfection we’ll have more room for joy in our lives. When we’re not agitated by imperfection, we can see the beauty in it.

Most of Julie’s work comes from a place of beauty and joy. She tries to avoid creating work that is socially irritating or didactic. Instead, she wants to create work that is uplifting, that allows people to breathe more lightly. At the same time, she’s not afraid to paint a controversial subject such as fracking. A fracking piece might not be suited for hanging above the mantel in every home, but it has its own unique beauty. When she thinks about fracking, Julie focuses on the positive—the jobs it provides and the fuel for appliances. In general, she wants to create work that makes people happy, but more importantly, she wants to create work that is emotionally accessible. “I want my art to be for everyone,” she said.

Follow Julie on Instagram @julie_crews_ or on Facebook @juliecrewsfineart