Instructor Spotlight

Julie Sulzen painting at OPAL.

FEBRUARY 2025

JULIE SULZEN is a Chicago native who has been painting for over 25 years. As an artist, she focuses on painting the different landscapes of the American Midwest, documenting the change in aesthetics, physical age, and gentrification of the city she was born and raised in. Looking at her work feels like looking at a photo album, alive with her confident brushwork and squinted artist’s eye.

Julie is currently based in her home studio in Logan Square where she sells her original works and accepts commissions. Julie is an adjunct art professor at Concordia University Chicago as well as a teaching artist at Little Street and a guest lecturer at several institutions such as the Chicago Public Library, Chicago Architecture Center, and the Racine Art Museum. She has been teaching at OPAL as our resident oil painting instructor for the past 3 years, creating a community of painters who have been studying with her. Julie brings the “life” to “painting from life” at OPAL!

Julie’s students develop the basic skills of oil painting, both with the medium itself and its application. In Julie’s class, students are taught the techniques required to create a still-life painting, including value, composition, color theory, and technical brushwork skills. Students who have never held a brush before can be confident that by the end of the five-week session, they will be able to oil paint successfully at home. Students return to Julie’s class again and again to receive her advice and to continue to grow and develop their own style as oil painters. Take a class with Julie

From Left to Right:

Two Women Oil 24" x 36", Red Oil on Canvas 48" x 48", Lawn Sale Oil on Canvas 24" x 36", Chain Link Oil on Canvas 24" x 36"

Thank you so much Julie, for sharing your oil painting expertise with the OPAL community. OPAL is truly grateful to have the opportunity to work with such a talented Chicago artist!