Julene Franki

Julene Franki is a sixth generation Texan whose parents recognized her artistic abilities and sent her to private art lessons until she was fourteen years old in Alice, Texas. Her first oil painting won a blue ribbon at the local fair when she was 5. Painting at 12 with a pallet knife, she connected with the texture as a channel of subjective emotion. Julene has used various media since, while in college and law school at UT, Austin and her professional career in Austin, Philadelphia, and San Antonio. Returning to Texas in 2012, in the fever of pent-up passion released, she has painted prolifically with pallet knives, in increasingly 3-D impasto style, mostly with acrylic en plein air.

In July 2014, she spent 4 weeks painting in Tuscany including two weeks in Florence, studying art with Florence Academy-trained artists. She was the art teacher for a Tuscan retreat in 2017. She has also painted in Berlin. In 2018 Julene began to paint in what she calls “super impasto” style, or what some call carving in paint. In “Baroque Garden View” and “My Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Brackenridge Park” the paint extends in 3-D beyond the front painting surface. In the 2019 painting for the McNay Museum “Hip to Be Square” fundraising event, she painted “Vivid Pride of Barbados at The Botanical Garden.” She used transparent acrylic ink and super heavy clear-drying acrylic gel to imitate the translucence of organic, water-based living things. In 2020, she poured her heart into “From My Tears Sprang Flowers,” which is part of the San Antonio Art League and Museum January, 2024 Show “Lone Star Horizons: Texas Landscapes Past, Present, and Future” and was also featured in the 2022 Pennsylvania exhibition, “Landscapes—Serene and Savage” by MVA Gallery—Modern Arts. “A Bonfire of Poppies,” another extreme 2021 3-D painting was featured in recent shows including the 2022 Bihl Haus Gallery show, where Julene has participated for several years. In September 2022, Julene’s was selected for a San Antonio Department of Arts and Culture, Individual Artists Grant. The January 2024 “Solo Artist Exhibition: The Missions Of San Antonio In History, En Plein Air, and In Super Impasto” is the culmination of that grant. Julene was juried into the River Art Group Gallery, and has had the privilege of showing in San Antonio, Boerne, Wimberley, Austin, Rockport, Texas, Pennsylvania, and New York City.