Juliette Aristedes

By Pat Aube Gray

The Art of the Portrait Journal

Issue No. 35, 1st Quarter 2007

The Artist
oil on canvas, 48 x 36"

Born in 1971 in South Africa, Juliette Aristides immigrated with her parents at age two to the Pennsylvania countryside.  She recalls spending more time in her imagination during her childhood than in reality.  “Drawing,” she says, “gave me a way of engaging.”

An  extraordinary draughtsman, Aristides is the product of many years of study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, the more traditional National Academy of Design, and the studios of Myron Barnstone, Atelier (formerly Atelier Lack), Jacob Collins, and the Water Street Atelier.  The artist has embraced the methods of working through the skill and craft building disciplines of creating art under the tutelage of a single instructor.

 

The Bowl
oil on canvas

Today this shy, though highly focused and driven, young mother of three is an accomplished and highly acclaimed artist who founded the four-year Aristides Classical Drawing Atelier at the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, Washington in 1999.  Gary Faigin, Artistic Director at Gage, states Juliette “…possesses a rare and critically important ability to inspire her students to extremely high levels of effort and productivity…” and, “sets extremely high standards for accomplishment.”

Aristides has authored Classical Drawing Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice, which was released in the fall of 2006.  For the practicing artist, student, and teacher, this new tome provides a strong framework in the disciplines of the classical tradition, and an insightful history of its development, demise, and current rebirth.  It also contains the author’s persuasive, philosophical, and logical discourse supporting the belief that to achieve artistic greatness we must understand and build upon knowledge of the achievements already attained throughout art history. Her second book, Classical Painting Atelier, is due out in the fall of 2007.