Kaley Patterson
A&E Editor
@KaleyKayPatt
Julie Larimer-Conley walked around the Cameron University Science Complex enthusiastically. She gazed at her collection of art and pointed at each piece as if she was painting it all over again, stroke-by-stroke. This was the first time a gallery had featured her creations.
Larimer-Conley considers herself an “artist/student.” Last semester, Larimer-Conley started her adventure as a learner at Cameron, but her journey as an artist began long ago.
“I’m taking classes to improve my craft,” Larimer-Conley said. “I love art, and I have been an artist all my life … I believe it was something I was born to do. I asked my mother just the other day when I first started drawing, and she said, ‘Well, before you started primary school.’”
The exhibit in the Science Complex features 20 works produced by Larimer-Conley. Conley said she created a few of the pieces years ago and some of them while at Cameron.
“I wanted to show that I have been doing this for most of my life,” she said. “Here [the Science Complex exhibit], it spans from ’84 to present, and most of the work has been within the last couple of years.”
A couple of Larimer-Conley’s pieces list prices for onlookers who are interested in purchasing them.
“In my adult life,” Larimer-Conley said, “I have been mainly a free-lance artist. I’ve done a lot of commissioned portraits and just worked a lot on my own. But it wasn’t until my husband, who is the dean of the biology department, and I moved here that I had the opportunity to take some art classes. So, I checked it out, and it has been amazing; I’m hooked.”
Larimer-Conley described each of her pieces as if she knew it personally and had known it all her life – its past, present and future intertwined. She depicted the process of creating each one – how she created it, where she was, who she was with, when she was inspired and what it meant.
Some of her pieces are of the horses from her father’s ranch in Kansas. Larimer-Conley said equines were some of her first subjects, and they continue to be her favorite. However, her recent fascination is with the nature right out her back door.
“Since I’ve moved here,” Larimer-Conley said, “I’ve got inspired by the Wichita Mountains. There’s something magical about the mountains; there really is.”
Professor Katherine Liontas-Warren introduced Larimer-Conley to plein air painting. They both venture out to the mountains with their art tools in tow in search of a subject to paint outdoors.
“I take my [supplies] usually to the mountains or somewhere in Medicine Park,” Larimer-Conley said. “That’s where I draw a lot of my drawings… My love right now is to be outdoors and paint. That is the most beautiful area. It just is, like I said, it’s like magic.
“When I sit down with my easel and my paint, it’s just, ah, it’s something you feel. I get inspired more by what I feel. If I see something that inspires me and I feel it, then I’m definitely going to do a lot better at putting it on paper.”
Larimer-Conley hopes to showcase her art in other galleries across Oklahoma, but it’s fulfilling to her to have her art featured on Cameron campus.
“It’s very humbling, very humbling to me,” she said. “It’s just very exciting, very exciting.”