Juliette Travous is a multi-talented painter who works in pastels, oils and charcoals, although pastels are her passion.  Her pastel paintings have a depth of color and a unique luminosity of light and shadow that invoke a definitive mood in her work.  Juliette brings to her pastel paintings some of the wonder that she feels when she comes upon an emotive scene and is able to transform that feeling into a painting.  Her paintings include landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. However, Juliette, like the impressionists, is drawn to landscapes, and especially those that contain water.  It could be the way light plays and reflects on the water’s surface or it could be the many varieties of color that can be found when gazing into water. But, something about water in its many forms calls to her creative desires. Also, like the impressionists, she uses color broadly to evoke mood within her paintings.  

     Her landscapes are peaceful, mesmerizing and they draw you into their own world.

     Juliette is originally from Illinois and currently makes her home in St. Charles, Missouri,   a small historic town along the Missouri River that boasts of Lewis and Clark encampments.  Juliette was educated in the sciences and has a degree in Earth Science.  Her educational and working experiences have continuously brought her into the landscape where her observations of nature’s color and light have impacted her painting style significantly.  She has been studying and honing her painting skills for years.

      Juliette’s use of layers of color in her pastels comes from her work with oils and at first glance many of her pastels have been mistaken for oil paintings.  She begins her paintings with her base colors using hard to medium pastels and rubs them into the surface.  She may use two, three, or even four layers of color rubbed into the surface prior to layering the softer pastels over the top of these initial layers of pastel.  Juliette uses sanded or other textural surfaces as her painting canvas so it can hold the many layers of color that she applies.  When using heavily textures surfaces, the texture of the surface may be visible in the painting and used as added depth to the piece.  Spray fixatives are never used due to their tendency to dull and darken the vibrant colors of the pastels.

Learn more about artist Juliette Travous on her website.