Julie Cardillo
Julie Cardillo grew up in a household that valued music, literature, and creativity. Her father was an avid reader and violinist, while her mother nurtured a love of visual expression through interior design. Encouraged early to explore the arts, Cardillo’s journey solidified in high school when she created an abstract work that earned honorable mention in a Congressional Art Competition in New Jersey. That recognition gave her the validation to pursue art as a lifelong path.
She went on to earn a BA in Fine Art and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, where faculty guidance and critique helped shape her practice. Today, her work navigates multiple themes, most notably the intersections of nature and culture—how environments are commercialized, altered, and in turn shape human psychology and behavior—and themes of healing and balance that emerged after her personal experience with cancer. She often explores the boundaries between interior and exterior spaces, pushing against oppositions through composition, disorientation, and transformation.
Influenced by Jennifer Price’s Flight Maps and Alexander Wilson’s The Culture of Nature, as well as the shifting history of American landscape representation, Cardillo’s work has been described as “Liminal Landscapes.” She embraces multiple bodies of work simultaneously, resisting the art world’s push to narrow her focus.
Her process is intuitive and physical, rooted in music, drawing, and the act of making. Cardillo enjoys the challenge of triptychs and large-scale works, but continually returns to smaller studies and drawing as a grounding practice. For her, success lies in staying true to subjects that resonate deeply, even against the pressure of external trends.
Her work will be on view in fall 2025 at:
North Carolina Artists Exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh (Sept 28–Nov 9).
The Schwa Show at Emerge Gallery & Art Center, Greenville (Sept 5–27).
