Julie Heffernan was born in Peoria, Illinois. She received her BFA in Printmaking and Painting from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She then proceeded to the Yale School of Art where she received her Masters of Fine Art in Painting. Her luxuriant paintings are manifestations of her rich knowledge of art history and her Baroque sensibilities—the interior spaces of her compositions often refer to ornate drawing rooms and grand ballrooms, while the exteriors are placed within imagined worlds and abundant forests. Her compositions are drawn from the nonsensical, peculiar narratives of her dreams - something of a contemporary surrealist. She considers much of her work as a kind of self-portrait because she draws them so directly from the images of her subconscious. Since 1985, her art has been predominantly featured in countless New York galleries; Julie has been featured in one-person exhibitions at Catherine Clark Gallery as well as in Broken Homes at the Megumi Ogita Gallery in Tokyo, Japan.
She has been exhibiting widely for the past 20 years. Some of her selected exhibitions include those at Weatherspoon Art Gallery (NC), The Korean Biennial (Korea), Herter Art Gallery (MA), Tampa Museum Of Art (FL), Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VA), Columbia Museum Of Art (SC), Mcnay Art Museum (TX), Knoxville Museum Of Art (TN), The New Museum (NY), Milwaukee Art Museum (WI), The Norton Museum (FL), to name just a few. Her work has attracted critical attention in numerous publications including The New York Times, Art in America, Artforum, and Artnews. since 2005, she has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery.
