At 7 years old, thinking that her mother would never find out, Julie snuck into the studio, adding to the latest work in progress. As an accomplished amateur oil painter and water colorist, “mom” knew the importance of enabling the creativity within at an early age. She was Julie’s first inspiration to express through art.

“Masterpiece”, a popular board game that Julie played in late 1960s/early 1970s, created further interest in artists such as Jackson Pollack, Hans Hofmann and Marc Chagall.

As a youth, Julie took a variety of art classes, exposing her to water color, acrylic, mixed media, block printing and silk screen. Even a little bit of plaster sculpting.

During her 4 year tenure at college, she progressively trained in drawing, painting, graphic design, illustration, photography, wood and clay sculpting, and print making. Subject matter varied from the human figure, portraiture, still life and landscape. Eventually, Ms. Salazar graduated with a BFA from the Montserrat College of Art in 1989 and made her way to New Mexico, making Santa Fe her home for the past 26 years.

Although Julie discovered early on that she much preferred the style of non-objective and abstract art over realism, she found her first success selling realistic, oil landscape paintings at Trader Jack’s Flea Market, now the Tesuque Pueblo Flea Market. Julie created her first following from a number of local and national shows, becoming a self-sustained artist in 1996.

During her mother’s illness, Julie stopped painting for one year, only able to work on symbolic, dream-like ink drawings. Following her mother’s death in 2010, those simple drawings became Julie’s inspiration for her Inner Landscape Series (abstracts painted in acrylic and ink), first introduced in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2011.

On March 3, 2018, Julie begins her 14th season at the Loretto Chapel, displaying new abstract works from her new series.