Featured Artist Julian Keller-King | Artsy Shark

Julian Keller-King of Fox Spirit Design is a genderqueer inventive from the wildwood whose portfolio of mixed-media and digital works intertwines nature, narrative, and creativeness. Study extra on their website.

“When You Know That Goodbye is Inevitable” digital illustration, 30″ x 40″

Preschool bookworm, pupil thespian, queer freelance inventive: I’ve at all times inhabited the colourful margins of society’s expectations. Till I got here to phrases with being transgender, I struggled to seek out group and a way of belonging in a youth spanning from southern California to rural Montana. Most of my time was spent having fantastical out of doors adventures and establishing friendships on-line.

“Right here Comes the Breaking” digital illustration, 40″ x 30″

My lifelong love of the interaction between phrases and pictures within the human artwork of storytelling took root at age six. I found graphic novels and fictional travelogues on the library. I used to be instantly in love.

“Bear in mind the Sound of Your Title” digital illustration, 40″ x 30″

I noticed little or no of myself mirrored in society round me. Tales have been the one place I actually felt at house. I learn books in crabapple bushes and blanket forts, underneath my desk at college and whereas traversing hallways and sidewalks.

The artist Julian Keller-Kingat the Holter Museum of Artwork exhibit opening

Tales let me reside numerous lives by proxy, and the worlds in my thoughts have been a lot bigger than the small cities the place I lived. I carried a inventive grafting of sketchbook and journal wherever I went, a tandem report of the world I skilled and the issues I imagined.

“To Finish Up Right here with You” digital illustration, 40″ x 30″

It was solely a matter of time earlier than I started creating my very own narratives: tales, hand-drawn maps, sketchbooks, illustrations on the brown-paper covers of my textbooks and within the margins of my classroom notes, elaborate short-term tattoos, and an countless stream of letters mailed in colorfully-decorated envelopes.

“November Stars” combined media narrative illustration, 13×9.75”

My ongoing research deal with expertise associated to those pursuits, like calligraphy, nature and determine sketches, artwork journaling, world historical past, and archetypes in fantasy. Tales and the way in which we inform them are a elementary a part of how we study and develop from one era to the subsequent. The artwork of translating our particular person experiences into mythic archetypes is a technique to distill private moments into symbolic essences, issues we will study from and share.

Work in progress, combined media

My rising physique {of professional} work is a mirrored image of my inside world and the issues I like most. Seasonal shifts, wild creatures, human cultures, and the construction and symbolism of tales, with a contact of magic sprinkled within the margins. Whether or not portray digitally with mild or utilizing ink, paper, and no matter treasures I discover in my travels, the act of inventive expression reveals the deeper currents of my experiences mirrored again at me in a clearer configuration; I do know myself higher by the tip.

“Rising Molten” digital illustration, 40″ x 30″

Artwork is a essentially subjective expertise everyone seems to be invited to take part in, a thread connecting lives that share one thing in widespread. It’s a celebration of the issues that preserve us human, and I really feel deeply grateful to have the ability to name myself an artist by commerce. I acquired certification in 2018 from the Montana Arts Council’s Artrepreneur Program (MAP) and commenced full-time work as an artist in 2021.

“Far From Any Hope of Harbour” digital illustration, 30″ x 40″

From legendary creature portraits to surreal narrative illustrations, my work celebrates pure cycles, open-hearted curiosity, and the intensely private work of self-discovery.

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