Julie Durkin Marty is a painter whose work maps the territory between the deep sea and outer space — not as landscapes, but as emotional states. Building layered surfaces of poured pigment moved with squeegees and brushes, then sanded back to a soft, skin-like finish that holds light from within, her paintings draw inspiration from seafloor topography, weather systems, and the visual language of scientific imaging. A recurring arc moves through the work like a breaking wave, a rainbow, a gravitational pull — the palette and the titles keep it from taking itself too seriously. Her paintings ask whether the cosmos and the unconscious operate according to the same deep structure — and whether that structure might, occasionally, have a sense of humor.

Working at the intersection of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, and Graffiti Art, her layered surfaces suggest portals, codes, and maps — gestural fields suspended between chaos and emergence. Her practice engages themes of climate anxiety, feminine agency, and hope embedded in the act of mark-making.

Born in 1977 in Pennsylvania, Durkin Marty received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Her work has been exhibited nationally in solo and group exhibitions at venues including DADA POST, Holland Tunnel, G-Town Arts, 63 Audubon, GBG Gallery, Mulry Fine Art, and CoLAB Arts, and has been featured in the New York Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Palm Beach Daily News, the Hartford Art Pages, and Artist Magazine.