Julie Farstad
Professor of Painting
Bio
Julie Farstad is an artist, professor and co-chair of the Painting Department at the Kansas City Art Institute who explores native plants, motherhood, and the act of cultivation in the context of ecological crisis in mixed media studio artwork and community-based painting projects. She creates public-facing artwork in her Flowers For Marlborough Project that confronts neighborhood blight by sharing the beauty and function of native plants through large-scale painting, free workshops, and giving away free native plant seedlings to the Marlborough community. Her oil paintings on panels, including her new Wildflower Revolution series that explores the intricate forms of the native plants of the Midwest, are represented by Zg Gallery in Chicago. Julie Farstad was born and raised in Elmira, New York. She earned her BFA in Painting at the University of Notre Dame and her MFA in Painting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She lives and works in Kansas City, Missouri with her husband and two sons.