She Drew It Design
Earth’s beauty has whispered to Julie her entire life. She has long been fascinated with the unending beauty and wonder of the world around her. At eight, she drew a tree in winter with all its empty branches becoming increasingly smaller as they reached toward the sky. She remembers watching butterflies dance in the sunlight as they flitted among wildflowers in a warehouse parking lot next to the inner-city church for the deaf where her father served as pastor. Julie has an innate ability to pause and spot splendor even in seemingly ordinary spaces. This ability developed over time into something sustainable and life giving.
Shaping Perspective
Julie Drew believes art is a form of communication. She patiently listens to the world around her, absorbing its beauty and wonder.
She translates the mystery, peace, and love she sees into her art; capturing marvels with her paintbrushes. As a teacher, she helps others find their own voices and join in the song of creation
Early In Life
Moving around
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Julie grew up in an artistic family, she was encouraged to explore her creativity through crafts, ballet, musical instruments, singing, drawing, writing, and painting. Along with her two siblings, she explored the suburbs and natural areas of St. Louis, Missouri and Spokane, Washington where they lived.
Though the city held innumerous stories, there was nothing Julie enjoyed more than traveling and camping with her family. Her most memorable holiday was a four week journey around the western United States when she was 12. On that trip she saw the glorious Rocky Mountains for the first time, waterfalls in Yellowstone, the mesas in Arizona and the endless waves of the Pacific coast. The unique beauty of each location entranced her. She wanted to drink it all in, letting it fill her so it would always be a part of her. Julie’s parents nurtured her curiosity and wonder by visiting museums and historical sites.
Julie’s observations deepened in the summer before entering high school when she began to connect the beauty and details of the natural world with spirit and mystery. “As I walked in the woods at the top of the hill, a glade opened before me. The sun’s rays of dancing light filtered through the trees, illuminating rocks covered in moss and plants.They stood solemnly, like an altar in peacefulness. It felt holy, sacred,” remembers Julie. Holding onto the amazing experience in her heart, she wrote about it in school that year and shared it in a painting 10 years later. (Holy Place)
Julie studied advanced biology and horticulture in high school, drawing plants as she studied them. Learning more about plants and animals was fascinating to Julie, as she dove even further into the details of nature through scientific observations and experiments.
Education
Learning in and outside of the classroom
Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA, where Julie Drew received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing, had a unique class that combined philosophy, psychology, and art. It challenged Julie to connect more with her inner feelings and inner consciousness through journaling and art projects. There were two projects that stood out in this class, “One project was a plexiglass box with the rose bursting through the plexiglass; another was the cardboard cutout of myself, split in half, part of me that was depressed and ashamed, the other side that was confident and bright.” Journaling and using art as a tool to process became the ground work for Julie to process her feelings and experiences. Betty Edwards books, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” and "Drawing on the Artist Within,” were influential as Julie continued to learn how to process her feelings and experience through art.
That desire to see, experience, and observe new places was instrumental in Julie’s decision to take her third year of university abroad with Scandinavian Seminars. She spent a year studying the folk art of Norway and the Norwegian language and culture at Numedal Folkehøgskole. She learned weaving, wood carving, art history, painting, silkscreen, etching and pottery. She solidified her spiritual walk as she leaned heavily on her faith to see her through the year and the turmoil within herself.
She spent a lot of time painting and enjoying the marvels right outside her bedroom window. She remembers one misty morning when the beauty called her out to the river below the school. The sun was breaking through the mist, shining rays of brilliance upon the dark blue of the water. It was a magical morning. Julie took photos and later painted a version of this scene, it was another holy moment for her.
For her main project for the program that year, Julie studied the art and literature of the 1880’s in Norway. She was intrigued by the impressionists, Seurat, Monet, Renoir, Mary Cassatt and wanted to see what the Norwegian artists were doing. She liked the work of Erik Werenskiold and Hans Heyerdahl along with many others. It was a time period where art and literature reflected the everyday world of everyday people, giving meaning and beauty to the ordinary. The artists of Scandinavia, like the impressionists in France, were painting in the outdoors, capturing the light as it fell on their subjects.
Personal Growth
Being creative and resourceful
Finding beauty in the world around her, even in the ordinary everyday things, became vital to Julie as time went on.
Julie finished up her BFA degree at PLU in December of 1987. A month later she entered into a new phase of life, marrying Sam Drew and taking that ‘oh so perfect last name’ as her own art name.
A year and a half later, Julie and Sam moved to Chicago, where Sam went to Seminary. Julie stayed home taking care of their firstborn son, nurturing her passion for art by getting up four hours early every morning to paint before her son woke up. Julie put aside the oils and switched mediums to color pencils which were easier and healthier to use around children.
Within the first nine years of marriage Julie and Sam: moved 8 times, lived in 4 states, and had three children. In each new home Julie carved out a space for her art. She carried a sketchbook with her and drew whenever she had a chance. Julie entered craft shows and small art shows. She taught small art classes out of their home and within the homeschooling communities. Julie joined art groups, read many art books, and extended her creativity to her children with art, crafts, and music.
During this time, Julie learned the process of making handmade paper from recycled newsprint. The desire was born to make an archival paper that she could paint on. As a homeschooling science and art project with her children, she began experimenting with different paper pulp and adding natural “fluffy” fibers to the paper. Julie collects the different “fluffy” fibers as she hikes at different times of the year: i.e. poplar seed in June, fireweed in September, cattail and thistle in October. She gathers the fabric she uses from discarded clothing and fabric at reuse centers.
In the fall of 1997, Julie and her family moved to Edmonton, AB Canada where her husband had taken a call to be a pastor. Julie’s time was divided by family, homeschooling, and church work, but she still continued to work on building her body of artwork. She found inspiration in her children and the beauty around her. Her consistent journaling enabled her to process her feelings and express her emotions, faith, and experience through her art. Metaphors related to nature would come to her mind when reading scripture that inspired her artistic expression.
Madeleine L ’Engle’s books, "Walking on Water", "The Rock that is Higher" and "Penguins and Golden Calves" were inspiring for Julie’s own journey of writing and expressing herself in art and her spiritual journey.
Living Water
Nature speaks
Professional Landscape
Spiritual reflection
In 2002, Julie had enough paintings to participate in the Edmonton Whyte Ave Art Walk. And in 2003 had her first solo art show in a gallery. Julie began showing her art in local galleries and festivals and juried group art shows.
Spring 2004, Sam invited Julie to do a collaboration for Lent. She would select the scripture and reflect on it using art, and he would preach on the text. By Easter, they had a ‘way of the cross’ painting series around the church.
The following year Julie started to work on a series based on the phrase that had been on her heart, “God is My Refuge.” As Julie researched the Hebrew words of refuge, she found six different Hebrew words that the English translated as refuge, each depicting a different aspect to the relationship with God in the Old Testament. Julie Wrote, “When the phrase “God is my refuge” came to mind I thought I would be painting a lot of rocks. Instead, it was so much more. I found that my own story, and my husband’s story was becoming interwoven in the process. Each of the paintings reflected a piece of our story. As I worked on the paintings, specific songs came to mind. ” After a year of creating, what had started as a series of paintings had become a meditation series and a full worship service.
Julie shared the God is my Refuge series in churches and conferences around Alberta both as a meditation display and the full worship service. She published the paintings and meditations in a book.
"God is my Refuge, a Devotional and Study Guide"
in 2006, with an expanded and revised version in 2017.
Long have we needed the bold strokes that could connect a splendidly made world with the truth of Logos held up against the light of own anguish (and delight) of soul. Bless you in your calling to draw those lines! – Neil White
Julie was invited to teach an art retreat with King’s Fold Retreat Centre. She used it as a way to help others create art and connect with their spirit. Julie continues to run the Art Vocabulary for the Soul Retreat yearly.
Julie approaches everything with a creative heart. Julie and Sam expanded her art business to include website design, using her gifts of seeing beauty and communicating it to others and expanding it to seeing possibilities in design and business. Julie’s paintings have been featured in several editions of the Centered magazine. Her paintings have been on the covers of a series of books published by the Urban Center for Evangelical Spiritual Formation.
Recent Work
Northern Lights series
In the winter of 2021, after experiencing a -28C midnight trip to see the Aurora Borealis with her youngest daughter. Julie spent a couple months painting the Frosty Northern Lights series. Since the temperature was so cold that night and the two weeks following, Julie had ample time to experiment with frost, the cold temperatures and wet watercolor paintings which resulted in lovely, subtle and delicate frost patterns that appear in the skies of the Northern Light paintings.
Julie continues to wait, listening with an open heart and mind to where life leads and where art will take her next. This continual theme of watching, waiting, and listening is epitomized in her most recent series of the Frosty Northern Lights.
DANCING NORTHERNLIGHTS 5
| 9.5"x22" | Watercolorand Ink
FROSTY NORTHERNLIGHTS 1 | 12"x13.5" | Watercolorand Ink